Asātamanta — Book of the Ones · Chapter Seven (Itthivagga) · Poem 1 of 10
Setting
No narrative scene in the canonical verse itself
Speaker
A student, resolving to leave lay life behind
Form
One stanza (six lines), opening a chapter with difficult historical content
Length
Under 1 minute to read
Northern parallel
This reading guide does not assert a specific matching text for this poem in other Buddhist literatures.
Difficulty
★☆☆☆☆ — short, but opening a chapter with genuinely difficult content
Why this text
This poem opens the Itthivagga (‘Women Chapter’), whose first several poems voice explicit misogynistic attitudes from ancient source material. This reading guide presents that content honestly, as this site does throughout — describing what the text says and what Sujato's own comments observe about it, without treating the attitudes themselves as endorsed teaching.
Reading guide
A fictional pretext for teaching an existing prejudice
The verse gives a student's resolution: ‘the women in the world called unclaimed — there is no confining them. They are rude and full of desires, like an all-consuming flame. Leaving them behind, I shall go forth and foster seclusion.’ Per Sujato's comment, a young student is told by his mother that his education is incomplete until he learns a mysterious ‘spell of the unpleasant’. His teacher knows no such spell exists, but recognizes what the mother actually wants: for her son to learn of what she considers ‘the wickedness of women.’
The story's own framing device, worth noticing
The tale itself is built around a fiction: there is no real ‘spell’, only a mother's existing prejudice, delivered to her son through an invented teaching device by a teacher who privately knows better. This reading guide notes that structure plainly, without presenting the resulting verse's sweeping claims about ‘women in the world’ as this site's own position.
Key terms
asā — “unclaimed”, per Sujato's comment resolved as ‘a’ + ‘sva’, “without an owner”.
asātamanta — “the spell of the unpleasant” — a fictional teaching device, per Sujato's comment invented to deliver an existing prejudice rather than a real spell.
sikhī sabbaghaso — “an all-consuming flame” — one of the verse's sweeping images, given here as the text states it, not as an endorsed claim.
Asātamantajātaka — the traditional title of this tale, opening the Itthivagga.
Itthivagga — “Women Chapter” — this collection's seventh chapter, whose first several poems voice misogynistic attitudes from ancient source material, presented here as historical content rather than endorsed teaching.
The text
The text in full: a single six-line verse, opening a chapter with genuinely difficult historical content, discussed above. Translation: Bhikkhu Sujato (CC0, SuttaCentral).
§1The women in the world called unclaimed—there is no confining them. They are rude and full of desires, like an all-consuming flame. Leaving them behind, I shall go forth and foster seclusion.
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Self-check quiz
Ten questions. Click an answer to see immediate feedback. No score is recorded — this is for your own checking.
Question 1 of 10
What does the mother in this poem's underlying story tell her son, per Sujato's comment?
Correct: A. Setting up the poem's fictional framing device.
Question 2 of 10
Does the teacher believe such a spell actually exists?
Correct: B. A fictional pretext for delivering the mother's own existing prejudice.
Question 3 of 10
How does this reading guide characterize the sweeping claims this verse makes about 'women in the world'?
Correct: C. Consistent with this site's practice of presenting difficult historical material honestly rather than silently or as endorsed.
Question 4 of 10
What chapter does this poem open?
Correct: D. Whose first several poems voice misogynistic attitudes from ancient source material.
Question 5 of 10
What structural device does the underlying story use, worth noticing according to this guide?
Correct: A. The 'spell' itself is acknowledged within the story as fictional.
Question 6 of 10
What resolution does the student reach in the verse?
Correct: B. The verse's own closing action.
Question 7 of 10
What is this poem's traditional title?
Correct: C. The sixty-first poem overall, and the first of the Itthivagga.
Question 8 of 10
How many lines make up this verse?
Correct: D. Slightly longer than the four-line form most common in this collection.
Question 9 of 10
Where does this poem sit in the collection's own chapter structure?
Correct: A. Opening this collection's seventh ten-poem chapter.
Question 10 of 10
What approach does this reading guide take toward this chapter's difficult content generally?
Correct: B. Consistent with the approach already established at Ja 13 earlier in this collection.
