Prince Sattva was one of the previous incarnations of Gautama Buddha, according to a jataka story. The son of King Maharatha, he became an aescetic and gained a few disciples. On his walk with his closest disciple, he comes to the edge of a cliff, at the bottom of which is a starving tigress about to eat her newborn cubs in desperation. The bodhisattva (buddha-to-be) tells his disciple to go look for food and he will stay and try to figure out a way to save her and her young. While his disciple is gone, the bodhisattva reflects that while his disciple very well may not find food, his body is just so much flesh ("a sack of shit," literally, as the tradition states), and by giving it up, he can save the tigress' purity and her cubs' lives. He leaps off the cliff to his death, attracting the