— The Dhammapada, verse 135 (tr. F. Max Müller, 1881)
About this quote
हिन्दी में
जैसे ग्वाला अपनी लाठी से गायों को हाँककर बाड़े में ले जाता है, वैसे ही बुढ़ापा और मृत्यु मनुष्यों के जीवन को हाँकते चले जाते हैं।
What it means
The force in this image is routine, not violence. A cowherd does this every evening; the staff taps rather than strikes, and no cow is asked where it would like to go. Age and Death are cast as drivers working to a schedule, which makes them less dramatic and far harder to argue with than an enemy would be.
Notice also what is being driven — not men, but the life of men. The span itself is the herd. That is why the verse wears better than most reminders of mortality: it is not describing a final event that arrives one day, but a steady pressure already in motion, moving you a few steps further every evening you have been alive.
What it teaches you
Treat ageing as something proceeding at a fixed daily rate rather than as a threshold you will cross much later — the cows move a little each evening, not all at once. In practice that changes which decisions you are entitled to postpone by a year, because the year is not neutral storage; it is part of the drive.
अर्थ और सीख
यहाँ बुढ़ापा और मृत्यु किसी हमलावर की तरह नहीं, ग्वाले की तरह दिखाए गए हैं, जो हर शाम बिना हड़बड़ी के गायों को बाड़े की ओर हाँक ले जाता है। ज़ोर ‘जीवन’ पर है — पूरी उम्र ही वह झुंड है जिसे हाँका जा रहा है। सीख यह कि उम्र कोई दूर की घटना नहीं, रोज़ चलती हुई प्रक्रिया है, इसलिए जिस फ़ैसले को हम ‘अगले साल’ पर टालते हैं, वह साल भी इसी हाँक का हिस्सा है।
Where it comes from
This is verse 135 of the Dhammapada, from the chapter called Punishment — the golden rule argued from shared fear of pain and love of life.
The Dhammapada is a collection of 423 verses in Pali, among the oldest and most widely read records of the Buddha’s teaching. This English translation is by F. Max Müller (1881), the pioneering Oxford scholar of Indian texts; the verse number is cited with this quote.
