Conquer anger with calm
अक्रोधेन जयेत् क्रोधम् असाधुं साधुना जयेत् ।
जयेत् कदर्यं दानेन जयेत् सत्येन चानृतम् ॥
akrodhena jayet krodham asādhuṃ sādhunā jayet |
jayet kadaryaṃ dānena jayet satyena cānṛtam ||
Translation
Conquer anger by calm, conquer the wicked by goodness, conquer the miser by giving, and conquer falsehood by truth.
Meaning
Four victories won with the opposite weapon. The verse is in the Mahābhārata (Vidura's counsel in the Udyogaparvan) and was collected in the anthologies, here as no. 127 of Sternbach's Mahāsubhāṣitasaṃgraha.
Remarkably, Buddhist literature has the same verse: the Pāli Dhammapada (verse 223) and its Sanskrit counterpart, the Udānavarga, which is also in our corpus. It is one of the clearest cases of a verse shared across Indian traditions.
The instrumental case does all the work: akrodhena, sādhunā, dānena, satyena, "by means of".
Word by word · 10 words
| Devanagari | IAST | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| अक्रोधेन | akrodhena | by non-anger, by calm (instr. sg.) |
| जयेत् | jayet | one should conquer (3rd sg. optative of √ji) |
| क्रोधम् | krodham | anger (acc. sg. m.) |
| असाधुम् | asādhum | the wicked man (acc. sg. m.) |
| साधुना | sādhunā | by goodness, by the good (instr. sg.) |
| कदर्यम् | kadaryam | the miser (acc. sg. m.) |
| दानेन | dānena | by giving (instr. sg.) |
| सत्येन | satyena | by truth (instr. sg.) |
| च | ca | and |
| अनृतम् | anṛtam | untruth, the liar (acc. sg. n.) |
Pronunciation
akrodhena jayet krodham asādhuṃ sādhunā jayet |
jayet kadaryaṃ dānena jayet satyena cānṛtam ||
- akrodhena: kr cluster then aspirated dh, ak-ro-dhe-na.
- kadaryaṃ: ka-dar-yaṃ.
- ṛ is a vowel, a short syllabic r (like the "ri" in "rhythm" said quickly): mṛ-tyu, not mar-tyu.
- ṃ (anusvāra) is a nasal: it sounds like m before p/b/m, n before t/d, ṅ before k/g, and a nasalised vowel before s/ś/h.