Vayu and the Shalmali tree

A giant silk-cotton tree boasts that it is stronger than the Wind and strips itself bare before he comes.

The story, beat by beat

1. A vast shalmali tree stands on a Himalayan height, sheltering elephants, parrots, caravans and ascetics.
2. Narada admires it and supposes the Wind must be its friend, since no branch is broken.
3. The tree says the Wind is no friend and has not an eighteenth part of its own strength.
4. Narada rebukes it and reports the boast to Vayu.
5. Vayu tells the tree he spared it only because Brahma once rested under it, and promises to test it tomorrow.
6. At night the tree admits to itself that it lied and is weaker than the Wind.
7. It has all its own branches, leaves and flowers cut away.
8. In the morning Vayu finds it bare and says it has done to itself what he would have done; the tree is ashamed.

pride boast prudence fable