Ch. 1: The Council Under the Banyan

In a part of a great forest in the south of India, where the teak trees grew so tall that the monkeys in their tops had never once seen the ground, there lived a lion whose name was Numskull.

It was not the name his mother had given him. His mother had called him something long and splendid, with “thunder” in it and possibly “moon” as well. But the animals of the forest had long since stopped using it, and among themselves, in whispers, under bushes, they called him Numskull. Nobody had ever been brave enough to say it to his face, and so he had never learned that he had a new name at all.

Numskull was large, golden and very proud. He was proud of his mane, which he combed every morning against the bark of a sal tree. He was proud of his roar, which could send the parakeets up out of the canopy like a green handful of thrown leaves. Above all he was proud of his appetite, which he regarded as a sign of greatness, the way some kings regard the size of their treasuries.

The trouble was that he did not hunt as other lions hunt, when he was hungry and only as much as he needed. He hunted whenever he was bored, and he was bored very often. If he saw an animal, he could not spare it. He would pounce on a deer at dawn, leave half of it in the grass, and pounce on a wild boar before noon simply because the boar had grunted in a tone he did not care for. By evening he would be chasing the buffaloes across the river for the pleasure of watching them run.

“A king,” Numskull liked to say, to nobody in particular, “should never be kept waiting for anything.”

So it went for a whole season, and the forest grew quiet in a way that forests should never be quiet. The peacocks stopped dancing. The jackals stopped laughing at night. Mothers kept their young ones in the deepest thickets, and every rustle in the grass made a hundred hearts beat faster.

At last the oldest of the elephants, a grey and wrinkled lady named Vriddhi, who remembered three droughts and one flood and the year the river changed its course, sent word through the forest that there was to be a council.

They met by night, in a clearing beneath a banyan tree so old that its hanging roots had become trunks of their own, so that it seemed less a tree than a small wooden city. The moon was full. Numskull, who slept heavily after dinner, was snoring in his den three valleys away.

They came from every corner of the forest. The deer came, stepping lightly, with their ears turning this way and that. The boars came, grumbling. The buffaloes came, enormous and anxious, and stood at the back so as not to block anyone's view. The wild oxen came, and the porcupines, and the mongooses, and a sleepy family of sloth bears who had to be woken twice. Last of all, keeping close together at the edge of the firelight that the fireflies made, came the rabbits.

“Friends,” said Vriddhi, swinging her trunk slowly, “we cannot go on like this. At the present rate there will be nobody left in this forest by the next rains except Numskull, and he will have to eat his own tail.”

“Then let us fight him!” cried a young boar named Danta, whose tusks had only lately come in and who was very pleased with them. “There are a hundred of us. There is one of him.”

There was an uncomfortable silence. Everyone was thinking the same thing, which was that a hundred animals might indeed defeat one lion, but that the first ten or so would not be present to enjoy the victory, and nobody wished to be among the first ten.

“I have a better idea,” said a buffalo from the back. “Let us all move to another forest.”

“Which forest?” asked the old elephant. “The forest to the north belongs to the tigers. The forest to the east belongs to men, who have nets and spears and very good memories. The west is desert, and the south is the sea. No, my children. This is our home. We must keep it.”

“Then let us reason with him,” said a gentle sambar stag named Chitra, whose antlers were so wide he had to turn his head sideways to pass between trees. “Even a lion must know that a forest is like a field. If you eat all the seed, there is no harvest next year.”

“Reason with Numskull?” said the boar. “You might as well reason with a landslide.”

But the more the council talked, the more it seemed that reason was the only weapon left to them. So, after much argument, which went on until the moon had crossed half the sky, a plan was agreed upon. They would go to the lion together, in the morning, while he was still full and drowsy. They would bow very low. They would remind him of his duty as a king. And they would make him an offer.

“Each day,” said Vriddhi, “we shall send him one animal for his dinner. One, and no more. He need not trouble himself to hunt at all. He may stay at home and be waited upon, like a great raja in his palace. And the rest of us will be left in peace.”

“And who,” asked a small voice from the edge of the clearing, “decides which animal goes?”

Everyone turned. It was a rabbit, a young buck with one ear that stood straight up and another that flopped over at the tip, as if it were permanently considering a question. His name was Shashaka, and he was known among the rabbits chiefly for asking things that nobody else had thought to ask.

“We shall take turns,” said the elephant kindly. “Each kind of animal in its turn. It is the only fair way.”

Shashaka nodded and said nothing more. But his crooked ear twitched, and he stared at the ground for a long while after the council had broken up.

In the morning they went to Numskull.

He was lying at the mouth of his den with his great paws folded, and he watched them come with one eye open. They came in a long, trembling line, the deer and the boars and the buffaloes and the wild oxen, and at the front of them the old elephant, and they knelt down in the dust before him with their heads bowed until their foreheads nearly touched the ground.

“Have done, O King,” said Vriddhi, “with this merciless and meaningless slaughter. It brings no glory to you and no happiness in this world or the next. The wise say that a king who tastes his kingdom like honey, a little at a time, may enjoy it all his life; but a king who swallows it whole has one good meal and never a second. Guard your subjects as a herdsman guards his cows, and they will feed you for ever.”

Then she laid out the plan. One animal a day, delivered at noon, to his very door.

Numskull yawned enormously, showing every one of his teeth, which was perhaps the point of the yawn. He considered the offer. He considered the fact that he would never again have to walk across the river in the heat of the day. He considered, mostly, the pleasant idea of being waited upon.

“Well, gentlemen,” he said at last, “you are quite convincing. I accept. But understand me. If on any day an animal does not come to me by noon, as I sit here, I promise you I will eat every last one of you.”

The animals agreed with great relief, and backed away bowing, and when they were out of sight they ran.