Once on a time, when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born a Tree Sprite. There was a village where fishermen lived. And one of these fishermen with his little boy taking his tackle went to fishing. Now a snag caught his hook and the fishermen could not pull it up. He thought, “What a fine fish! I’d better send my boy home and tell her to get up a quarrel and keep the others at home; so that there will be none to shares in my catch.” Accordingly he told the lad to run home and tell his mother what a big fish he had hooked and how she was to engage the neighbours attention. Then, fearing his line might break, he flung off his coat and dashed into the water to secure his catch. But as he groped about for the fish, he struck against the snag and his both his eyes lost sight. Moreover a robber stole his clothes from the bank. In an agony of pain, with his hands pressed to his blinded eyes, he came out trembling and tried to find his clothes.

Meantime his wife, to occupy the neighbours by a quarrel on purpose, had picked up quarrel without any reason. The neighbour’s wife said, “you abuse me without cause with your slanderous tongue. Come with me to the zemindar and I’ll have you fined eight pieces for slander.”

So with angry words they went off to the zemindar. But when the matter was gone into, it was the fishermen’s wife who was fined; and she was tied up and beaten to make her pay the fine.

Now, when the Tree Sprite saw how misfortune had befallen both the wife in the village and the husband in the forest, he stood in the fork of his tree and exclaimed, “Ah fisherman! both in the water and on land your labour is in vain, and twofold is your failure.”