English (Core) · Ch 15 — The Tiger King
Summary of the Lesson
Summary of the Lesson
The prophecy and the vow
The story is a satire on the Maharaja of Pratibandapuram, mockingly called the Tiger King. At his birth the astrologers predict that his death will come from a tiger. Even as an infant, the story says with comic exaggeration, he defies the warning. When he grows up and becomes king, he takes the prophecy as a challenge and vows to kill a hundred tigers, certain that by destroying the danger he will escape his fate. He begins hunting tigers within his own kingdom, which is rich in them, and he grows so pleased with his campaign that he bans everyone else from touching a tiger, reserving the whole slaughter for himself.
The hunts and the threats to his throne
The king kills tigers one after another. At one point his obsession endangers his rule: a high British officer wishes to hunt a tiger in his state, and when the king refuses to allow it — fearing for his own tally and his prophecy — he risks losing his throne. He saves himself only by sending a very large and expensive collection of costly gifts, including many diamond rings, to the officer's wife, at ruinous expense, so that the offended Englishman is appeased. The episode shows how the king will spend and scheme recklessly to protect both his hunt and his crown.
Marriage to complete the tally
In time the tigers in his own kingdom are wiped out, and the king has still killed only seventy. To find more, he arranges his marriage into a royal family of a state that has a large tiger population, so that on his visits to his father-in-law's kingdom he can go on hunting. In this way he brings his count up toward the hundred.
The hundredth tiger
The hundredth tiger is where the king's confidence quietly collapses.
When only one tiger remains to complete his hundred, it becomes very hard to find a hundredth. At last an old, weak tiger is located and driven before him. The king takes aim and fires, the tiger drops, and he goes home triumphant, believing he has fulfilled his vow. But in truth his bullet had missed; the tiger had only fainted from the shock, and it was one of the hunters who quietly shot the beast dead afterwards, so that the king would not lose face. The great hunter's hundredth triumph is thus a sham.