Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta was king in Benares, the Bodhisatta came into the world as a young Quail. He got his food in hopping over the clods left after ploughing.

One day he thought he would leave his feeding ground and try another; so he went to the edge of a forest. As he picked up his food there, a Falcon saw him, and attacked him fiercely. He was get caught.

Held prisoner by this Falcon, Quail made his moan: “Ah! How very unlucky I am! How little sense I have! I’m poaching on some one else’s preserves! Had I kept to my own place, where my fathers were before me! Then this Falcon would have been no match for me, I mean if he had come to fight!”

The Falcon said, “Why, Quail? what’s your own ground, where your fathers fed before you?”

“A ploughed field all covered with clods!”

At this the Falcon, relaxing his grip, let the quail go. “Go there! Quail! You won’t escape me, even there!”

The Quail flew back and perched on an immense clod, and there he stood, calling “Come along now, Falcon!”

Straining every nerve, poising both wings, down swooped the Falcon fiercely upon our Quail. “Here he comes with a vengeance!” thought the Quail; and as soon as he saw him in full speed, just turned over and let him strike against the clod of earth. The Falcon could not stop himself, and struck his breast against the earth; this broke his heart, and he fell dead with his eyes starting out of his head.