Whose Cow Is the Calf?

Two neighboring farmers each owned a cow, and both cows happened to give birth around the very same time in a shared grazing field, unattended. By the time either farmer arrived, one calf had wandered off entirely and could not be recovered, and the surviving calf stood between the two cows with no clear way to tell whose it truly was, since neither cow showed any obvious preference and both farmers insisted loudly that the calf was theirs.

Brought before Birbal, both farmers argued their case at length with no proof to offer either way. Birbal listened patiently, then ordered the calf tied up alone in an empty pen overnight, away from both cows entirely, with no food given to it at all.

The next morning, he had both cows released into the yard at the same moment. The calf, hungry and desperate, ran straight and without hesitation to the cow whose milk it recognized and needed, nursing eagerly the instant it reached her — settling, in a single unmistakable instinct, what no argument or witness ever could.