Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born a brahmin. Growing up, he was married to a bride of his own rank, who gave birth th three daughters named Nanda, Nanda vati and Sundari Nanda. At the death of The Bodhisatta, dying, they were taken in by neighbours and friends, while he was born again into the world as a golden mallard endowed with consciousness of its former existences. Growing up, the bird viewed its own magnificent size and golden plumage, and remembered that previously it had been a human being.

Discovering that his wife and daughters were living on the charity of others, the mallard planned to give his wife a golden feather at a time which will enable his wife and daughters to live in comfort.

So he flew to the house where they lived and sat on the top of the central beam of the roof. Seeing the Bodhisatta, the wife and girls asked where he had come from; and he told them that he was their father who had died and been born a golden mallard, and that he had come to visit them and put an end to their miserable necessity of working for hire. The Bodhisatta said, “You shall have my feathers, one by one, and sell it for enough money to keep you all in ease and comfort.”

He gave them one of his feathers and flew away. And from time to time he returned to give them another feather, and with the proceeds of their sale these Brahmin women grew prosperous and quit well to do. But one day the mother said to her daughters, “We cannot trust the birds. Who’s to say your father might not go away one of these days and never come back again? Let us use our time and pluck him clean next time he comes.” Thinking this would pain him, the daughters refused. The mother in her greed called the golden mallard to her one day. When he came, she took him with both hands and plucked him. Now the Bodhisatta’s feathers had this property that if they were plucked out against his wish, they ceased to be golden and became like a crane’s feathers. And now the poor bird, though he stretched his wings, could not fly, and the woman flung him into a barrel and gave him food there. As time went on his feathers grew again (though they were plain white ones now), and he flew away to his own abode and never came back again.