Once upon a time when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta was a tree-spirit dwelling in the top of a cotton-tree. A king of the rocs caught the snake king and making the snake disgorge what he had seized in his mouth he flew along the tree tops towards the cotton-tree. The snake-king stuck his hood into a banyan-tree and wound himself round it firmly. In the process banyan-tree was uprooted. Now in that banyan there was a bird, who flew up when the banyan was thrown away, and perched in one of the boughs high on the cotton-tree.

The tree-spirit seeing the bird shook and trembled with fear, thinking, “This bird will let its droppings fall on my trunk; a growth of banyan or of fug will arise and go spreading all over my tree; so my home will be destroyed.” The tree shook to the roots with the trembling of the spirit. The roc-king perceived the trembling, and spoke:–

I born with me the thousand fathoms length of that king-snake:

His size and my huge bulk you bore and yet you did not quake.

But now this tiny bird you bear, so small compared to me:

You shake with fear and tremble; but wherefore, cotton-tree?

Then the deity spoke in explanation of the reason:–

Flesh is thy food, I king: the bird’s is fruit:

Seeds of the banyan and the fig he’ll shoot

And bo-tree too, and all my trunk pollute;

They will grow tree in shelter of my stem,

And I shall be no tree, thus hid by them.

Other trees, once strong of root and rich in branches, plainly show

How the seeds that birds do carry in destruction lay them low.

Parasitic growths will bury e’en the mighty forest tree:

This is why, O king, I quiver when the fear to come I see,

Hearing the tree-spirit’s words, the roc-king spoke:–

Fear is right if things are fearful: against the coming danger guard:

Wise men look on both worlds calmly if they present fears discard.

So speaking, the roc-king by his power drove the bird away from that tree.