Once upon a time the Bodhisatta was born in a merchant family and doing his trade. At that time a religious mendicant, clad in a leather garment, in going his rounds for alms, came to the rams’ fighting ground. On seeing a ram falling back before him, he thought that ram is paying respect to him. He thought, “In the whole world, this ram alone recognizes my merits,” and raising his joined hands in respectful salutation he stood and repeated the first stanza:

The kindly beast obeisance makes before

The high – caste brahmin versed in holy lore.

Good honest creature thou,

Famous above all other beasts, I vow!

At this moment the wise merchant sitting in his stores, to restrain the mendicant, said:

Brahmin, be not so rash this beast to trust,

Else will he to lay thee in the dust,

For this the ram falls back,

To gain an impetus for his attack.

While the merchant was still speaking, the ram came on at full speed and striking the mendicant on the thigh, knocked him down. He was maddened with the pain and as he lay groaning, the merchant said:

With broken leg and bowl for alms upset,

His damaged fortune he will sore regret.

Let him not weep with outstretched arms in vain,

Haste to the rescue, ere the priest is slain.

Then the mendicant said:

Thus all that honour to the unworthy pay,

Share the same fate that I have met to – day;

Prone in the dust by butting ram laid low

To foolish confidence my death I owe.

Thus lamenting medicant met his death.

The Master, his lesson ended, thus identified the Birth: “The man in the leather coat of to-day was the same then as now. And I myself was the wise merchant.”