Once upon a time when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta was a tree-god in a forest. At that time a lion and a tiger lived in a mountain-cave in that forest. A jackal was in attendance on them, and living on their broken meats began to grow big. And one day he was struck with the thought, “I have not yet eaten the flesh of a lion or a tiger. I must make this lion and tiger quarrel and they will fight to death. Then I will eat their flesh.”

So he went near the lion and said, “Is there any quarrel, Sir, between you and the tiger?” “Why so?” The jackal said, “Your Reverence!When I am gone, this lion will never get anything to eat. He is not having my personal beauty, nor of my stature and girth, nor of my natural strength and power.” Then the lion said to him, “Get out! He will never speak like this.”

Then the jackal went to the tiger and spoke the same manner. On hearing him, the tiger hastened to the lion, and asked, “Friend! is it true, that you said so and of me?” And he spoke the first stanza:–

Is it thus Sudatha speaks of me?

“In grace of form and pedigree,

In might and prowess in the field,

Subahu still to me must yield.”

On hearing this Sudatha repeated the four remaining stanzas:–

Is it thus Subahu speaks of me?

“In grace of form and pedigree,

In might and prowess in the field,

Sudatha still to me must yield.”

If such injurious words are thine,

No more shalt thou be friend of mine.

The man that lends a ready ear

To any gossip he may hear,

Soon picks a quarrel with a friend,

And love in bitter hate will end.

No friend suspects without a cause,

Or carefully looks out for flaws;

But on his friend in trust will rest

As child upon its mother’s breast,

And ne’er will by a stranger’s word

Be parted from his bosom’s lord.

When the qualities of a friend had been thus set forth in these tour stanzas, the tiger said, “The fault is mine,” and begged pardon of the lion. And they continued to live happily together in the same place. But the jackal departed and fled elsewhere.

The Master, having brought his lesson to an end, identified the Birth: “At that time the jackal was the beggar who lived on broken meats, the lion was Sariputta, the tiger Moggallana, and the deity that dwelt in that forest and saw the whole thing with his own eyes was I myself.”