1. You don’t become a Brahmin
By matted locks, by lineage, or by caste:
If you drive away evils on every side,
Small ones and great,
Through driving away evils
You are called a Brahmin.
2. Fool, what use are your matted locks,
Your antelope-skin garment?
There’s a mess inside you:
You clean the outside.
3. The one from whom you can learn the Dharma
Taught by the Fully Awakened One
You should honour with reverence
As a Brahmin honours the sacrificial fire.
4. You don’t become a Brahmin by matted locks,
Nor by the three Vedas nor by traditional learning,
Nor by reverencing the fire,
Nor by plunging into water.
5. The one who knows his previous abodes,
Sees heavens and hells,
Who has reached the end of births,
Is a sage, purified by higher knowledge.
6. By these three knowledges
You become a Brahmin, a knower of the three Vedas:
Endowed with knowledge and conduct
You’re called a Brahmin.
7. Endowed with the three knowledges,
Calmed, with future births destroyed,
Unattached to the whole world,
You’re called a Brahmin.
8. By asceticism and the holy life,
Restraint and self-control,
You become a Brahmin.
This is the highest Brahminhood.
9. Strive, and cut across the stream;
Drive away sense-pleasures, Brahmin.
Without getting rid of desires
No sage can attain oneness.
10. Strive, and cut across the stream;
Drive away sense-pleasures, Brahmin.
Knowing the destruction of conditioned things,
You’ll know the unmade, Brahmin.
11. A Brahmin should not strike a Brahmin,
Nor unleash his anger against him.
Shame on him who strikes a Brahmin!
More shame on him who unleashes his anger!
12. After killing mother and father
And two royal kings
And destroying a kingdom with its tax-gatherers,
The Brahmin walks unharmed.
13. After first killing the king
And then an entire assembly,
After killing an enemy with his army,
The Brahmin walks unharmed.
14. When, among twofold states,
A Brahmin goes to the other shore,
Then, once he knows,
All fetters pass away.
15. This is of no small benefit to a Brahmin,
To have restraint of mind towards things that are dear.
The more the mind turns away from these things,
The more is sorrow calmed.
16. One’s called ‘Brahmin’ for getting rid of evil;
One’s called ‘wanderer’ for equable conduct;
For getting rid of one’s own stain
One’s called ‘renouncer’.
17. But I don’t call someone a Brahmin
Because he’s born of a Brahmin womb or mother:
If he owns anything
He’s just a man who says ‘good sir’.
One who owns nothing, without clinging,
Him I call a Brahmin.
18. One who has laid down the rod
In dealing with beings, moving or still,
Who neither kills nor causes to kill,
Him I call a Brahmin.
19. One who in this world
Takes nothing that is not given,
Whether long or short, tiny or great, fair or foul,
Him I call a Brahmin.
20. One who here gives up sense-desires
And wanders homeless,
With the enjoyment of sense-desires exhausted,
Him I call a Brahmin.
21. One who doesn’t cling to sense-pleasures –
Like water on a lotus leaf,
Or a mustard seed on a needle’s point –
Him I call a Brahmin.
22. One who utters speech that isn’t rough
But instructive and truthful
So that he offends no one,
Him I call a Brahmin.
23. The one who does no wrong
Through body, speech or mind,
Restrained in the three ways,
Him I call a Brahmin.
24. One perfectly calmed, ceased,
A gentle speaker, not puffed up,
Who illuminates the meaning and the Dharma,
Him I call a Brahmin.
25. One perfectly calmed, ceased,
A gentle speaker, not puffed up,
Who has reached the supreme goal,
Him I call a Brahmin.
Chapter 1 of the Khotan Manuscript of the Gāndhārī Dharmapada has the equivalent title to Pali Dhammapada Chapter 26, ‘The Brahmin’ (brammaṇa), and shares some of the same material. Both seek to redefine the Brahmin, attacking those who claim superiority merely on grounds of birth or traditional Brahmanical practices. The weight given to this topic throughout the Dharmapada literature suggests that this was a topic of great concern for early Buddhists. The Gāndhārī version of the chapter has fifty verses; here I translate the first twenty-five.
In what follows, I have noted where verses in the extract have close equivalents in the Pali Dhammapada. The symbol ‘=’ denotes that, apart from the normal sound-changes between Gāndhārī and Pali, the verses are identical. Where the verses are closely related but not identical, I have marked them as ‘equivalent’.
1. For ll. 1–2, cf. Dhammapada 393. For ll. 3–6, cf. Dhammapada 265, but here the pun is on ‘Brahmin’ (brammaṇa) and ‘to drive away’ (brah-).
2. Equivalent to Dhammapada 394.
3. Equivalent to Dhammapada 392.
4. three Vedas: In the original usage, the three Vedas are the most ancient part of Hindu scripture, comprising the Ṛgveda, Yajurveda and Sāmaveda, consisting respectively of hymns, ritual formulae, and chants, intended for use as part of the elaborate Brahmanical ritual. In v. 6, below, the concept is reinterpreted in a Buddhist sense.
5. cf. ll. 1–4 of Dhammapada 423.
higher knowledge: abhiña (Pali abhiññā).
6. You become … You’re called: Literally, ‘One becomes … One’s called’. Endowed with knowledge and conduct: cf. Dhammapada 144 and note.
8. the holy life: brammayirya – equivalent to Sanskrit brahmacarya, Pali brahmacariya.
9. For the first two pādas cf. Dhammapada 383.
10. Here the ‘you’ is literal: the Buddha is addressing a particular person.
11. = Dhammapada 389.
12. = Dhammapada 294. For the symbolism, see notes there.
13. Presumably the enemy is Māra, and the ‘assembly’ and the ‘army’ his followers, the various defilements of the mind.
14. = Dhammapada 384.
15. Equivalent to Dhammapada 390, and probably representing its earlier (and more comprehensible) form.
16. = Dhammapada 388.
17. = Dhammapada 396.
18. = Dhammapada 405.
19. = Dhammapada 409.
20. enjoyment of sense-desires: Or perhaps ‘sense-desires and enjoyment’. Equivalent to Dhammapada 415, with kama-bhoka-parikṣiṇa in place of kāma-bhava-parikkhīṇaṃ.
21. = Dhammapada 401.
22. = Dhammapada 408.
23. = Dhammapada 391.
24. Pādas b and c as Dhammapada 363.
25. Pādas b and c as Dhammapada 363; pādas c and d as Dhammapada 386 and 403.