- The full story of the Tiger King’s vow, his hundred tigers, and how he died, in the order the book tells it
- Who the Maharaja, the dewan and the astrologer are, and what each of them stands for in the satire
- What makes this story a satire, and exactly whom and what it is satirising
- How dramatic irony and situational irony work in this story, with the exact lines that show each
- How the astrologer’s warning about the hundredth tiger comes true in a way nobody expects
- The key difficult words, explained in place and in Words to Know
- How to answer an extract-based question from this chapter, with a worked example
1Meet the Author and the World of the Story
1.1 About Kalki
Kalki is the pen name of R. Krishnamurthy, a Tamil writer famous for historical and satirical fiction. “The Tiger King” is one of his best-known short stories in English translation, and it uses humour and exaggeration throughout to make a serious point about power, superstition and cruelty to wildlife.
Always write the author’s name as the book gives it: Kalki. This is a pen name, not a family name, so do not write “Mr. Kalki” or expand it into a different name.
1.2 The World of the Story
The story is set in the fictional princely state of Pratibandapuram, ruled by a Maharaja who becomes known as the “Tiger King” because of an astrologer’s prophecy about how he will die. Kalki invents both entirely for satire: everything about the Maharaja, from his enormously long title to his hundred-tiger tally, is deliberately exaggerated so the reader laughs at him while still seeing the cruelty and vanity beneath the comedy.
The story’s setting is the fictional princely state of Pratibandapuram, ruled by the Maharaja Jung Jung Bahadur, whose entire adult life becomes shaped by an astrologer’s prophecy that he will die from a tiger.
2The Story, Step by Step
Kalki tells the story in five numbered sections. Before the details, here is the shape of the whole story in one glance.
2.1 Section I: A King Named After His Own Death
The narrator opens by telling us, before anything else, that the story’s hero is already dead: “the Tiger King has reached that final abode of all living creatures. In other words, the Tiger King is dead.” He announces it in the words Bharata used to tell Rama about Dasaratha’s death, and jokes that “Even the threat of a Stuka bomber will not throw me off track.”
The Maharaja’s full title is given in exaggerated, mock-royal detail: “His Highness Jamedar-General, Khiledar-Major, Sata Vyaghra Samhari, Maharajadhiraja Visva Bhuvana Samrat, Sir Jilani Jung Jung Bahadur, M.A.D., A.C.T.C., or C.R.C.K.,” usually shortened to “the Tiger King.”
You do not need to memorise the full title word for word. Knowing that it is deliberately long and grand, and that it is a device to mock royal self-importance, explains the satire.
At his birth, astrologers foretell that the child “will one day have to meet its death,” and then, astonishingly, the ten-day-old infant himself speaks: “O wise prophets! It was I who spoke,” demanding to know the manner of his death, not merely that death will come. When told he will die from the tiger, the infant growls, “Let tigers beware!” The book adds that “This account is only a rumour rife in Pratibandapuram,” though “with hindsight we may conclude it was based on some truth.”
“The Bull and the Tiger are enemies, therefore, death comes from the Tiger.”
The chief astrologer, explaining the prophecy
2.2 Section II: An English Upbringing, and the Hunt Begins
The crown prince grows up entirely in English style: he “drank the milk of an English cow, was brought up by an English nanny, tutored in English by an Englishman, saw nothing but English films,” exactly like every other Indian crown prince of the time. At twenty he takes charge of the state from the Court of Wards.
Hearing of the old prophecy, the Maharaja reasons that since “you may kill even a cow in self-defence,” tigers may be killed too, and starts hunting. After his first kill, the astrologer warns him: he may kill ninety-nine tigers “in exactly the same manner,” “But you must be very careful with the hundredth tiger.” Asked, “What if the hundredth tiger were also killed?”, the astrologer swears that he will tear up and burn his books on astrology, “cut off my tuft, crop my hair short and become an insurance agent.”
Students often say the Maharaja hunted tigers “to protect his people.” The text gives no such reason: he hunts purely to defeat the prophecy and complete a personal tally of a hundred. Do not add a motive the story does not give.
2.3 Section III: The British Officer, and the Diamond Rings
The state bans tiger hunting by anyone except the Maharaja, on pain of confiscation, and he survives several close calls, at times fighting a tiger bare-handed when a shot misses.
A high-ranking British officer visits, wanting to hunt a tiger and be photographed with it. The Maharaja flatly refuses: “I can organise any other hunt… But tiger hunt! That’s impossible!” Even when the officer’s secretary proposes a compromise, letting the Maharaja do the actual killing while the officer is photographed “holding the gun and standing over the tiger’s carcass,” the Maharaja still refuses, risking his kingdom to protect his monopoly on tiger hunting.
To smooth things over he sends fifty expensive diamond rings from a Calcutta jeweller to the officer’s wife, the “duraisani.” The king and the dewan expect her to choose one or two and send the rest back, but she replies only, “Thank you very much for your gifts”; in two days a bill for three lakh rupees arrives from the British jewellers. The Maharaja is glad even so: though he has lost three lakh rupees, “he had managed to retain his kingdom.” One reading sees this as the story’s sharpest jab at colonial-era power.
2.4 Section IV: The Tigers Run Out, So the Maharaja Gets Married
Over ten years the Maharaja kills seventy tigers, and then the tiger population of Pratibandapuram’s own forests goes extinct. The narrator jokes about the reason: “Who knows whether the tigers practised birth control or committed harakiri?”
Needing thirty more, the Maharaja summons the dewan and, after a comic mix-up (“Your Majesty! I am not a tiger!”), announces he will marry, purely so he can hunt in his in-laws’ tiger-rich state. The dewan finds a match, and the Maharaja kills five or six tigers on every visit to his father-in-law, until his tally reaches ninety-nine.
Satire uses humour, irony or exaggeration to expose and criticise human vices or folly. The book itself says the story “is a satire on the conceit of those in power” (Reading with Insight 1). Its targets can be read as the vanity of royal power, an Anglicised princely upbringing, flattery driven by fear, and colonial-era officials.
2.5 Section V: The Faked Hundredth Kill, the Wooden Tiger, and Death
Even the father-in-law’s tiger farms run dry, and the old warning is recalled word for word: “Even after killing ninety-nine tigers the Maharaja should beware of the hundredth.” Sheep then begin disappearing from a hillside village. After clearing two men “famed for their ability to swallow sheep whole,” Khader Mian Saheb and Virasami Naicker, the villagers conclude a tiger is at work; the Maharaja grants a three-year tax exemption and hunts at once.
The tiger cannot be found for days. Many officers lose their jobs, and in his fury the Maharaja orders the dewan to double the land tax. The dewan objects: “The people will become discontented. Then our state too will fall a prey to the Indian National Congress.” The Maharaja tells him to resign instead.
Terrified, the dewan secretly brings a live tiger from the People’s Park in Madras, hides it in his house, and at midnight he and his aged wife drag it into the car and he drives it into the forest; the tiger “launched its satyagraha,” refusing to leave the car, so he has to haul it out by force.
“Satyagraha” is Gandhi’s term for non-violent resistance. Kalki uses it here purely as a comic exaggeration, giving the tiger’s stubbornness a grand political name; it is not a reference to any real political event in the story.
Next day “the same old tiger” wanders to the Maharaja “as if in humble supplication.” He shoots it in “boundless joy,” declaring his vow fulfilled, but the bullet has actually missed; the tiger has only fainted “from the shock of the bullet whizzing past.” The hunters decide he must never learn this, since “they could lose their jobs”; one of them shoots it from a distance of one foot. So the hundredth tiger is a real, live tiger, but the Maharaja’s kill was not real. The dead tiger is paraded through town and buried under a tomb.
Dramatic irony is when the reader or other characters know something the main character does not: here, that the shot missed and a hunter killed the hundredth tiger, while the Maharaja proudly believes his vow is genuinely fulfilled.
“Until then the Maharaja had given his entire mind over to tiger hunting. He had had no time to spare for the crown prince.” For his son’s third birthday, after searching every shop for a gift, the Maharaja chooses a rough wooden toy tiger. The shopkeeper, afraid of punishment “under the rules of the Emergency” for quoting too low a price, inflates its real cost of two annas and a quarter to three hundred rupees. The Maharaja replies, “Very good. Let this be your offering to the crown prince on his birthday,” and takes it away with him.
Playing with his son, a sliver from the toy’s rough surface pierces the Maharaja’s hand. He pulls it out and goes on playing, but the next day infection flares in his right hand; in four days it becomes a suppurating sore that spreads all over the arm. Three surgeons from Madras operate, then announce:
The chapter closes with its own verdict on events: “In this manner the hundredth tiger took its final revenge upon the Tiger King.” Here the wooden toy is the “hundredth tiger” only in a figurative sense; the literal hundredth tiger was the live tiger from the People’s Park in Madras, shot and buried.
3Meet the Characters
3.1 The Central Figures
The Maharaja (Jung Jung Bahadur)
Ruler of Pratibandapuram, nicknamed the “Tiger King.” Vain and obsessed with his hunting tally, he risks his kingdom over a tiger hunt, then sends fifty diamond rings costing three lakh rupees to the British officer’s wife to keep it. His downfall by a wooden toy is the story’s central irony.
The Dewan
The Maharaja’s minister, caught between an unreasonable king and his own job. He objects to doubling the land tax but, threatened with dismissal, secretly brings a tiger from the People’s Park in Madras. One reading: fear, more than loyalty, drives him.
The Chief Astrologer
The court’s chief astrologer makes the founding prophecy at the Maharaja’s birth, and it is this same figure (the book also calls him “the State astrologer” once) who later adds the specific warning about “the hundredth tiger.” He is dead by the time of the final hunt, but his words set the whole plot in motion and are, in the end, proved right in a way nobody could have planned for.
Minor but important names: the British officer and his wife, the duraisani, who replies to the fifty diamond rings with “Thank you very much for your gifts”; and the shopkeeper who inflates the wooden tiger’s price out of fear, unknowingly selling the Maharaja the true instrument of his death.
4Themes of the Chapter
4.1 Four Ideas at the Heart of the Chapter
The vanity and conceit of the powerful
The Maharaja’s enormous title and hunting tally show how power can turn even cruelty into a matter of pride.
An empty, Anglicised upbringing
English milk, nanny, tutor, films: the prince’s whole childhood satirises Indian royalty modelling itself on colonial rulers.
Fear-driven obedience, not real loyalty
The dewan, the hunters and the shopkeeper each deceive the Maharaja to protect themselves: the dewan from the king’s anger, the hunters from losing their jobs, the shopkeeper from punishment.
Callousness towards wildlife
A hundred tigers are hunted purely for one man’s pride, with no thought for the animals. Reading with Insight question 2 asks students to identify the author’s indirect comment on this cruelty. The book also asks students to relate present-day game-hunting by the rich (Reading with Insight 4), to discuss a new system for the age of ecology (5), and to consider human attitudes to wild animals (Before you read).
5How the Story Is Told: Literary Devices
Kalki does not simply narrate events; he builds humour and meaning through specific techniques. Notice each one below.
5.1 Narrative Technique
A first-person storyteller narrates the Maharaja’s life in the third person, revealing right at the start that the Tiger King is already dead: a flash-forward that trades suspense for a focus on how the prophecy comes true.
Irony is when the actual outcome is the opposite of what is expected. The Tiger King, who killed ninety-nine tigers and won every close fight with them, is finally killed by a splinter from a harmless wooden toy, and by a surgery meant to save him.
A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that comes true partly because of the actions taken trying to avoid or fulfil it. The book does not use this term. The warning comes true in a way the astrologer did not intend: the hunt, the cover-up and the toy together end the Maharaja’s life.
Symbolism is when a writer uses an object or image to stand for a larger idea. The book does not use this term. One reading takes the tiger as standing for both the Maharaja’s power and, in its final wooden form, the fate he cannot escape.
An allusion is a brief reference to another well-known event, story or idea. This chapter alludes to the Ramayana, a “Stuka” bomber, Gandhi’s “satyagraha,” and the Indian National Congress, each used for comic or satirical effect.
Hyperbole is deliberate exaggeration, not meant to be taken literally, used for effect. The Maharaja’s absurdly long mock-royal title (“His Highness Jamedar-General… Sata Vyaghra Samhari…”) is the story’s clearest hyperbole, mocking royal self-importance through sheer excess.
| Detail in the story | Literary device it shows |
|---|---|
| The Maharaja’s absurdly long royal title | Satire and hyperbole (exaggeration), mocking royal self-importance |
| The astrologer’s warning about “the hundredth tiger” | Foreshadowing |
| Readers/hunters knowing the shot missed, the Maharaja believing he killed the tiger | Dramatic irony |
| Ninety-nine tigers killed, then death from a wooden toy tiger | Situational irony |
| The tiger’s “satyagraha” in the car | Allusion (to Gandhian non-violent resistance), used comically |
| “The operation was successful. The Maharaja is dead.” | Irony, in the surgeons’ own closing words |
6Words to Know
| Word / Phrase | Meaning as used in the story |
|---|---|
| indomitable | impossible to defeat or subdue |
| imperative | extremely important, necessary |
| demise | death |
| dewan | a chief minister in a princely Indian state |
| durai / duraisani | colonial-era terms of address for a British officer and his wife respectively |
| satyagraha | Gandhi’s term for non-violent resistance; used here comically for the tiger’s refusal to leave the car |
| suppurating | discharging pus, infected |
| harakiri | a Japanese term for ritual suicide, used here jokingly about the vanished tigers |
| Emergency | the emergency rules the shopkeeper fears breaking; the book does not say which |
| Stuka | a German dive-bomber of the Second World War, used jokingly by the narrator |
| Court of Wards | a government body that managed a princely state’s affairs until its young ruler came of age |
7Why “The Tiger King”?
On the surface it is the Maharaja’s own nickname, earned by his vow to kill a hundred tigers. By the story’s end it turns ironic: the self-styled master of tigers is undone not by a tiger’s strength but, on one reading, by his own obsession, carried out by a splinter from a toy.
8Answering Extract-Based Questions
The method below works for any extract from this story.
Extract: “The three surgeons who performed it came out of the theatre and announced, ‘The operation was successful. The Maharaja is dead.'”
Q. What makes this closing line ironic?
Step 1: Notice the contradiction: a “successful” operation should save the patient, not end in his death.
Step 2: Connect it to the whole story: he killed ninety-nine tigers and won each close fight with them, only to die from a wooden toy’s splinter, as the “hundredth tiger” prophecy foretold.
Answer: “Successful” and “dead” contradict each other, and the closing line suggests the wooden toy as the “hundredth tiger” only in a figurative sense; the literal hundredth tiger was a live tiger from the People’s Park in Madras, shot and buried.
Quote the exact phrase from the extract where your answer depends on the wording.
- Setting: the fictional state of Pratibandapuram; the Maharaja is named the “Tiger King” after an astrologer’s prophecy that he will die from a tiger, with a special warning about “the hundredth tiger”
- His upbringing is entirely Anglicised; he hunts to defeat the prophecy, and reaches ninety-nine tigers partly by marrying purely for access to his father-in-law’s tiger-rich state
- The British officer episode: fifty diamond rings sent to the officer’s wife, and a bill for three lakh rupees from the British jewellers, so that he keeps his kingdom
- When real tigers run out, the terrified dewan smuggles a live tiger from the People’s Park in Madras; the Maharaja’s shot misses, but the hunters secretly finish it off so he never learns the truth
- At his son’s birthday, the Maharaja takes a wooden toy tiger, priced at three hundred rupees, as the shopkeeper’s “offering”; a splinter from it infects his hand and he dies after surgery
- Final irony: “The operation was successful. The Maharaja is dead.” The wooden toy is the “hundredth tiger” only in the book’s figurative closing line; the literal hundredth tiger was a live tiger from the People’s Park in Madras, shot and buried
- Key literary devices: satire, dramatic irony, situational irony, allusion, hyperbole (self-fulfilling prophecy and symbolism are general terms the book does not use)
- Can I narrate the story’s events in the correct order, Section I through Section V?
- Can I explain what the astrologer’s prophecy actually says, and how it is finally fulfilled?
- Can I explain what the story satirises, with at least three examples?
- Can I tell dramatic irony and situational irony apart, using an example of each from this story?
- Can I explain why the diamond-ring episode with the British officer matters?
- Can I explain why the dewan smuggles a tiger from the People’s Park in Madras?
- Can I explain the irony in “The operation was successful. The Maharaja is dead.”?
- Can I use the words “satire,” “dramatic irony,” “situational irony” and “hyperbole” correctly about this chapter?