How Many Crows in Agra: Akbar and Birbal Story with Moral
Quick answer: How Many Crows in Agra, the Akbar-Birbal story retold in full: an unanswerable question, an exact number. The moral, what it says about power, and classroom questions.
Walking in the palace garden at dusk, the emperor watches crows settle in the trees and asks his minister exactly how many there are in the city. Birbal gives him a number to the last digit. The tale is short, and it is the one most Indian children can tell you by heart.
The story
The garden was loud with crows. They came in every evening over the river in ragged black lines and quarrelled in the tamarind trees until dark, and Akbar, walking with Birbal along the water channel, stopped to watch them. He was in the mood to set a trap.
"Birbal," he said, "you have an answer for everything. Tell me this. How many crows are there in Agra?" Birbal looked up at the trees. He looked at the sky, where more were coming. He appeared to be counting, moving his lips, and the courtiers walking behind began to smile at one another.
"Ninety-five thousand, four hundred and sixty-three, Jahanpanah," he said. Akbar stared at him. "You are certain?" "Entirely." "And if I have my men count, and there are more than that?" "Then some crows from Mathura and Fatehpur are visiting their relatives here," said Birbal. "The birds are very sociable." "And if there are fewer?" "Then some of our Agra crows have gone to visit their relatives in Mathura and Fatehpur. They will be back."
The emperor opened his mouth, closed it, and looked at the trees for a long moment while the crows, unaware that they had been counted, went on shouting at each other in the dusk. Then he laughed until he had to hold the wall. "And the ones flying over the river now?" he said. "Late for dinner," said Birbal, and they walked on.
The wit, and what it exposes
The point usually taken is that presence of mind beats knowledge, and that a confident answer to an impossible question can carry the day. Look more closely at what Birbal does with the trap. He gives the emperor a number, which is what was demanded, and then closes every exit through which the number could be proven wrong. The joke is really about the question. Akbar asked something no one can know in order to watch a man fail, and Birbal declines to fail on those terms, without ever saying the question was unfair.
Where it comes from, and why it lasts
No source from Akbar's reign records the crows; like the rest of the cycle, the tale was fastened onto the real Mahesh Das long after his death in 1586. Similar impossible-count riddles turn up in the tales of Tenali Raman and other court jesters.
It lasts because of the exactness. "About ninety thousand" would be nothing. The four hundred and sixty-three is the whole performance.
For young readers and classrooms
Five and up, and a favourite for the very youngest because the answer is so silly and so airtight.
Write your own
The engine is an unanswerable question met with a precise answer and two escape clauses. Set a character a test designed to embarrass them, and let them pass it not by knowing but by understanding the tester. The specifics carry the comedy; make the number long.
What writers can take from this
- For exams, name presence of mind as the theme and quote the two "visiting relatives" clauses.
- Note that Birbal never protests the question; he outgrows it.
- Writers, the more precise the false answer, the funnier it lands.
- Give the questioner a motive (setting a trap) so the answer has a target.
- Finish on a tossed-off last line rather than a moral.
Try it yourself
Write a scene in which a character is asked a question with no possible answer in front of a crowd, and answers it in a way nobody can check. Give the exact number, and give both alibis.
Questions
How many crows did Birbal say were in Agra?
Ninety-five thousand, four hundred and sixty-three, in most tellings. If more were found, they were visitors from nearby towns; if fewer, some Agra crows were away visiting relatives.
What is the moral of How Many Crows in Agra?
Presence of mind can answer what knowledge cannot. Birbal meets an impossible question with a precise number and covers both ways it could be wrong.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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