Once the Bodhisatta was a Brahmin teacher, and among his five hundred pupils was a very foolish but devoted youth, who had a knack of saying the wrong thing. Hoping to cure him, the Bodhisatta asked him to report anything which he saw.
One day the youth saw a snake, and on being asked by the Bodhisatta how it looked, he answered, "like the shaft of a plough" (nangalisa). The Bodhisatta thought the simile good, but when it was used again about an elephant, a sugar cane, molasses and even curds and milk, he realized that the boy was hopeless. The story was told in reference to Láludáyi, who never made an appropriate remark. Láludayi is identified with the youth. J.i.446ff.