If you make the owl your king,
You will fail in everything.
Besides, when Garuda is your king, what is this fellow good for? Suppose he has virtue, still a second king is not a good idea when you already have one. For the saying runs:
A single king of lordly sway
Is good; but more than one will slay,
Like plural suns on Judgment Day.
Why, the very name of your genuine king keeps others from taking liberties. As the proverb puts it:
Mere mention of a lordly monarch's name
To mean men, straightway saves from loss and shame.
And there is a saying:
The feigning of a great commission
Immensely betters your condition:
Feigning a message from the moon,
The rabbits dwelt in comfort soon."
"How was that?" asked the birds. And the crow told
HOW THE RABBIT FOOLED THE ELEPHANT
In a part of a forest lived an elephant-king named Four-Tusk, who had a numerous retinue of elephants. His time was spent in protecting the herd.
Now once there came a twelve-year drought, so that tanks, ponds, swamps, and lakes went dry. Then all the elephants said to the lord of the herd: "O King, our little ones are so tortured by thirst that
