The Painting That Moved

A traveling artist, eager to impress the emperor and earn a large commission, presented a portrait of Akbar and boasted extravagantly that it was so lifelike, it practically seemed to breathe and could, he claimed with a wink, "move on its own" if one looked away and back quickly enough.

The court, curious, asked him to prove such an unusual claim. The artist, caught in his own exaggeration, stammered and hedged, clearly having meant the boast only as poetic flattery rather than a literal claim.

Birbal, seeing the artist's predicament, stepped in smoothly. "The painting does move, in a sense," he said. "Watch closely." He had the portrait hung on a wall and asked everyone to leave the room for a moment, then quietly had a servant shift it slightly to a different nail while no one watched. When the court returned, Birbal pointed out the painting was now in a "different position" than before — technically true, and technically fulfilling the artist's claim, if not remotely in the spirit the artist had originally boasted of. Akbar laughed heartily at the clever save, and the artist, relieved and grateful, still received a fair commission for his genuinely skilled work.