Compare Dhammapada Translations

What each translator set out to do

The four set out to do different things, and each says so in his own words. For a recommendation of which to read first, with the print translations too, see which Dhammapada translation to read in our guide to the best Buddhist books.

Bhikkhu Sujato (2021): plain English, read against the discourses

“I try to remain as close as possible to the meaning of the text, while believing that readability does not compromise accuracy,” Sujato writes, and he claims one thing as unique to his version: “consistency with the rest of the Suttas.” It is in the public domain and printed on SuttaCentral line by line beside the Pali, the easiest way to see what each English phrase stands for. He notes that he consulted Buddharakkhita and Ṭhānissaro, “the latter of whom sometimes catches aesthetic nuances that a linguist might miss.”

Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu (1997): free verse, literal and alive

“Although trying to stay as close as possible to the literal meaning of the text, I’ve also tried to convey its savor,” Ṭhānissaro writes. He chose free verse as “the form that requires the fewest deviations from literal accuracy,” and where he senses that a Pali word is meant to carry several meanings he gives them all, even where this has meant “a considerable expansion of the verse.” His glossary explains his distinctive English: stress for dukkha, fabrication for saṅkhāra, Unbinding for nibbāna.

Acharya Buddharakkhita (1985): a practitioner’s version, in prose

Buddharakkhita calls his translation “a humble attempt by a practicing follower of the Buddha to transmit the spirit and content, as well as the language and style, of the original teachings.” For the few verses that “contain riddles, references or analogies that may not be evident to the reader”, he writes, “I have relied on the explanations given in Bhadantacariya Buddhaghosa’s commentary.” The translation was first published in 1959 and revised for the Buddhist Publication Society’s edition of 1985, the one on Access to Insight.

F. Max Müller (1881): the historic version

Müller’s translation, first published in 1870, followed “the edition of the Pâli text, published in 1855 by Dr. Fausböll,” and he called himself “a very humble gleaner in this field of Pâli literature.” It is the version behind “All that we are is the result of what we have thought,” and Sujato writes that “His work greatly influenced later translators.” Read it for its history, and beside a modern version to see how the English has changed.

The habit that helps most is the one our Dhammapada guide recommends: read a verse that matters to you in two or three renderings, and let the differences show you the Pali.

Where the translations part company

A state, or a path? (verse 21). Ṭhānissaro and Buddharakkhita make heedfulness “the path to the Deathless”, and Müller “the path of immortality”. Sujato writes “the state free of death”, and explains why: the phrase “must, then, refer to the ‘state’ of the deathless, not the path to it.” One reading makes heedfulness the road; the other makes it already the destination.

Suffering, stress or unsatisfactory? (verses 277–279). The three marks show the split clearly. For dukkha the four write suffering, stressful, unsatisfactory, and grief and pain. Ṭhānissaro chose stress because it “has the advantage of covering much the same range as the Pali word dukkha”; the PTS dictionary says simply that “There is no word in English covering the same ground as Dukkha does in Pali.” In verse 279 the three modern translators agree on not-self, where Müller has “All forms are unreal.” More on the three marks: all conditioned things are impermanent.

Mind, heart or intention? (verse 1). Sujato reads mano as intention, since it “often conveys the specific sense of ‘intentionality’”; Ṭhānissaro’s heart follows, he says, “a Thai tradition”, and his glossary defines it as “The mind in its role as will and intention”, not far from Sujato. What those choices do to the verse is set out in our guide’s how the translations differ, which also takes the house-builder’s last line (verse 154).

How the verses were chosen and checked

The 22 entries cover well-known verses, most of which have a page of their own here, such as verse 5 and verse 223. Verses 153 and 154 are shown together because two of the translators print them as one. Every line is copied from the site that publishes it (SuttaCentral, Access to Insight and Project Gutenberg), unaltered except for layout, and our quotation audit re-checks that each line still appears, word for word, on that page. Ṭhānissaro’s text is the Access to Insight version, which that site marks as possibly out of date; his own site, dhammatalks.org, carries a later revision. The key-word notes are checked the same way: each English rendering must appear in that translator’s verse, and each quoted phrase in the dictionary entry or introduction it cites. Müller’s text is the Project Gutenberg transcription of the 1881 edition, which omits his introduction and notes and drops his diacritics (“Nirvana” where the print has “Nirvâṇa”).

Credits and licences

Bhikkhu Sujato. Dedicated to the public domain via Creative Commons Zero (CC0), through SuttaCentral. The translator asks that his work not be used in AI training datasets, for the development of any AI model or algorithm, or in any AI-derived technologies; this tool shows it only as published, and it is not used by our Ask the Dharma tool.

Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu. ©1997 Thanissaro Bhikkhu. The text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From Access to Insight (revised 2012; last revised for Access to Insight on 30 November 2013).

Acharya Buddharakkhita. ©1985 Buddhist Publication Society. You may copy, reformat, reprint, republish, and redistribute this work in any medium whatsoever, provided that: (1) you only make such copies, etc. available free of charge and, in the case of reprinting, only in quantities of no more than 50 copies; (2) you clearly indicate that any derivatives of this work (including translations) are derived from this source document; and (3) you include the full text of this license in any copies or derivatives of this work. Otherwise, all rights reserved. From The Dhammapada: The Buddha’s Path of Wisdom, translated from the Pali by Acharya Buddharakkhita, with an Introduction by Bhikkhu Bodhi (Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 1985), via Access to Insight.

F. Max Müller. Public domain. The Dhammapada, Sacred Books of the East vol. X, part I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1881), as transcribed by Project Gutenberg.

Shareable quote cards are offered only for Sujato’s and Müller’s translations, because an image carries just a one-line source and the other two licences require their full notices to travel with every copy.

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