Once on a time when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born a Brahmin.

In his sixteenth year they addressed him thus, “Son, on the day of your birth we lit a birth fire for you. Now therefore choose. If you wish to lead a family life, learn the Three Vedas; but if you wish to attain to the Brahma Realm, take your fire with you into the forest and there tend it, so as to win Maha Brahma’s favour and hereafter to enter into the Brahma Realm.”

Telling his parents that a family life had no charms for him, he went into the forest and lived in a hermitage tending his fire. One day, an ox was given to him as a fee in a village. When he had driven it home to his hermitage, the thought came to him to sacrifice a ox to the Lord of Fire. But finding that he had no salt, and feeling that the Lord of Fire could not eat his meat offering without it, he decided to go back to bring salt from the village. So he tied up the ox and went again to the village.

While he was gone, a band of hunters came up and, seeing the ox, killed it and cooked themselves a dinner. And what they did not eat they carried off, leaving only the tail and hide. Finding only these sorry remains on his return, the Brahmin exclaimed, “As this Lord of Fire cannot protect his property, how shall he look after me? It is a waste of time to serve him, bringing neither good nor profit.” Having thus lost all desire to worship Fire, he said “My Lord of Fire! if you cannot manage to protect yourself, how shall you protect me? The meat being gone, you must eat the tail.” So saying, he threw the tail on the fire.

The Great Being put the fire out with water and departed to become a recluse. And he won the Knowledges and Attainments, and ensured his re birth in the Brahma Realm.