Once upon a time when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born a Spirit of the Air. In Benares, night festival of Kattika was celebrated and the city was decorated like a city of the gods, and the whole people kept holiday. And a poor man had only a couple of old dresses which he had washed and pressed. But his wife said, “My husband, I want a safflower coloured cloth to were outside and one to wear underneath; wearing those, I want to go the festival hanging round your neck.”

He said, “How are poor people like us to get safflowers? Put on your nice clean attire and come along.”

His wife said, “If I can’t have them, I don’t want to go at all. Get some other woman to go to the festival with you.”

He said, “Now why torment me like this? How are we to get safflowers?”

His wife said, “Where there’s will, there’s a way. Are there no safflowers in the king’s conservatories?”

He said, “Wife! the king’s conservatories are well guard ans no one can enter there. Give over this fancy, and be content with what you’ve got.”

As she persisted in her entreaties, his love for her at last made him give way and promise she should have her wish. At the hazard of his own life, he sallied out of the city by night and got into the conservatories by breaking down the fence. The noise he made in breaking the fence roused the guard, who turned out to catch the thief. They soon caught him and with blows and curses put him in fetters. In the morning he was brought before the king, who promptly ordered him to be impaled alive. Off he was hauled, with his hands tied behind his back, and led out of the city to execution to the sound of the execution drum, and was impaled alive. Intense were his agonies; and, to add to them, the crows settled on his head and pecked out his eyes with their dagger like beaks. Yet, heedless of his pain, and thinking only of his wife, the man murmured to himself “Alas, I shall miss going to the festival with you arrayed in safflower cloths, with your arms twined round my neck.”

And as he was babbling thus about his wife, he died and was reborn in hell.