Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta was king of Benares, the Bodhisatta was a Sindh horse, and they called him Swift-as-the-Wind; and he was the king's horse of ceremony. The grooms used to take him to bathe in the Ganges. There a certain she-ass saw him, and fell in love.

[paragraph continues] Trembling with passion, [339] she neither ate grass nor drank water; but pined away and became thin, until she was nothing but skin and bone. Then a foal of hers, seeing her pining away, said, "Why do you eat no grass, mother, and drink no water; and why do you pine away, and lie trembling in this place or that? What is the matter?" She would not say; but after he had asked again and again, she told him the matter. Then her foal comforted her, saying,

"Mother, do not be troubled; I will bring him to you."

So when Swift-as-the-Wind went down to bathe, the foal said, approaching him,

"Sir, my mother is in love with you: she takes no food, and she is pining away to death. Give her life!"

"Good, my lad, I will," said the horse. "When my bath is over, the grooms let me go awhile to exercise on the river bank. Do you bring your mother to that place."

So the foal fetched his mother, and turned her loose in the place; then he hid himself hard by.

The groom let Swift-as-the-Wind go for a run; he spied the she-ass, and came up to her.

Now when the horse came up and began to sniff at her, thought the ass to herself, "If I make myself cheap, and let him have his way as soon as he has come here, my honour and pride will perish. I must make as though I did not wish it." So she gave him a kick on the lower jaw, and scampered away. It broke his jaw, and half killed him. "What does she matter to me?" thought Swift-as-the-Wind; [340] he felt ashamed and made off.

Then the ass repented, and lay down on the spot in grief. And her son the foal came up, and asked her a question in the following lines:

"He for whose sake you thin and yellow grew,
And would not eat a bite,
That dear beloved one is come to you;
Why do you take to flight?"

Hearing her son's voice, the ass repeated the second verse:

"If at the very first, when by her side
He stands, without delay
A woman yields, all humbled is her pride:
Therefore I ran away."

In these words she explained the feminine nature to her son.

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The Master, in his perfect wisdom, repeated the third stanza:

"If she refuse a suitor nobly born
Who by her side would stay,
As Kundali mourned Windswift, she must mourn
For many a long day."