မဃဒေဝ refers to the Maghādeva Jātaka (Jātaka No. 9), one of the birth stories of the Bodhisatta (future Buddha), included in the Pāli Canon as part of the Khuddaka Nikāya of the Sutta Pitaka Wikipedia. In the Myanmar literary tradition, these Jātaka stories were elaborated into classical verse poetry (Zat Kyi ဇာတ်ကြီး), rich with moral instruction.
Translation of the Verse (မဃဒေဝ၊ ၂၀၅)
Those without virtue or wisdom,
Of ignoble birth and breeding,
Of incompatible kind and nature,
Base and vile men who transgress —
Even if they provoke and abuse,
Like a lion that avoids The foulest forest creature,
The filthy swine wallowing in mire —
Dear son, jewel of my heart,
Keep far away from such ones.
Do not engage, do not be baited,
Do not retaliate in anger,
And let no conflict arise.
ကြားမြင်မရှိ၊
ဇာတိမမြတ်၊
မျိုးဇာတ်မတူ၊
ယုတ်ညံ့သူတို့၊
ငြူစူပြစ်မှား၊
ပြုတုံငြားလည်း၊
တောသားညစ်ဆုံး၊
မစင်တုံးဖြင့်၊
ကိုယ်လုံးမံလျက်၊
ဘင်လူးဝက်ကို၊
မဖက်ဝေးအောင်၊
ခြင်္သေ့ရှောင်သို့၊
သားမောင်ရတနာ၊
ကင်းကြောင်းခွလော့၊
ပြိုင်ကာဆော်လှုံ့၊
ရန်စမြုံ့ဖြင့်၊
ရန်တုန့်ပြန်လစ်၊
ရန်မဖြစ်နှင့်။
(မဃဒေဝ။ ၂၀၅။)
The Teaching Explained
The verse uses the powerful lion and swine metaphor:
- The lion (ခြင်္သေ့) represents the noble, wise, dignified person.
- The swine rolling in filth (မစင်တုံးဖြင့် ကိုယ်လုံးမံလျက် ဘင်လူးဝက်) represents the rude, abusive, lowly-minded person.
The teaching is: A lion does not wrestle with a pig in the mud. If it did, both get dirty — but the pig enjoys it.
Similar Teachings from Other Traditions
Dhammapada (v. 222)
One who holds back rising anger is like a charioteer in control — others merely drop the reins.
Buddha (AN 5.161)
If someone gives you a gift and you don’t accept it, it returns to the giver. So too with insults — don’t accept them.
Epictetus (Stoic)
“If someone provokes you, know that your reaction is your own doing, not theirs.”
Proverbs 26:4
Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be just like him.
Summary
The wisdom of verse 205 of မဃဒေဝ is timeless:
- Recognize — The abuser’s rudeness reflects their lowly character, not yours.
- Do not engage — Responding to mud-slinging only drags you into the mud.
- Maintain dignity — The lion’s greatness lies in its composure, not its claws.
- Walk away — Distance is not weakness; it is wisdom.
“ရန်မဖြစ်နှင့်” — “Let no enmity arise” — is the final and most powerful line. It counsels not just restraint, but the cultivation of inner peace so complete that conflict simply cannot take root in you.
May this teaching bring you peace and strength.
