There they held a trial, just as in a court of law. Mukna was accused of two crimes: first, disobedience; second, attempted murder. A man was appointed to defend him at the trial, just as in a court of law a criminal may have a lawyer to defend him.
The elephant master presided at the trial of Mukna. He was the judge.
When the trial began, Mukna's keeper first gave evidence; that is, he said that Mukna had disobeyed his order, not only once, but three times.
Then several other keepers came forward as witnesses, and gave evidence; that is, they said that they saw Mukna disobey the order.
Then the man who was appointed to defend Mukna spoke for him; he was called the elephant counsel. The elephant counsel argued that Mukna must have been ill-treated to make him disobedient. So he questioned all the keepers. But all the keepers said that Mukna had not been ill-treated to make him disobedient.
"He may not have been ill-treated just that minute," the elephant counsel still argued. "But was he not ill-treated before? An elephant has a long memory; he never forgets an injury, or an act of kindness. An elephant has been known to remember both injury and kindness for more than twenty years. Then did not Mukna's keeper ever ill-treat him?"
But all the other men who were in charge of all the elephants gave evidence that Mukna's keeper had never ill-treated him; nor had anybody else ill-treated him—except that Mukna had been punished before for bad temper by being deprived of delicacies in his food. So Mukna had no true cause for disobeying the order that day.
Thus the charge of disobedience was proved against Mukna.
Then came the second crime of which Mukna was accused, namely, attempted murder. And that was very quickly proved, as everybody there had just seen that crime.
So the elephant master, who was the judge, pronounced sentence of punishment on Mukna. Mukna was ordered to receive ten blows for the disobedience, and ten blows more for the attempted murder.