Vīra — The Book of the Ones · Chapter One · Poem 8 of 10
Setting
No narrative setting; a short verse with a closing attribution
Speaker
An unnamed voice describing Vīra, using his own name twice within the verse
Form
One four-line verse, with a closing attribution note
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
★☆☆☆☆ — a wordplay on a name, built from a template shared with an earlier poem
Why this text
‘Vīra’ is itself the Pali word for ‘hero’, and this verse uses that very word twice: once as a plain description (‘a hero, content’), once as his proper name (‘Vīra is steadfast’). The verse's opening line, meanwhile, matches Dabba's (Thag 1.5) word for word.
Reading guide
A name that is also its own epithet
‘Vīra’ simply means ‘hero’ or ‘brave one’. The Pali uses the single word vīro twice in four lines — once functioning as a plain descriptive epithet (‘a hero, content, with doubt overcome’), once as his proper name (‘Vīra is steadfast’) — the same wordplay technique the Therīgātha uses for Muttā, whose own name means ‘released’.
The same opening line as Dabba's verse, almost exactly
‘Once hard to tame, now tamed himself’ opens this verse in wording identical to Dabba's (Thag 1.5). The third line then substitutes ‘goosebumps vanished’ for Dabba's ‘fear departed’ — the same idiom Sītavaniya's verse (Thag 1.6) also used.
A formulaic bank, mixed and matched across four poems
By this point in the chapter, a pattern is visible: Thag 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, and 1.8 all draw from a shared bank of closing phrases — victorious, fear or goosebumps vanished, fully quenched, steadfast — recombined with different opening images and different degrees of self-naming, rather than each being composed as an entirely fresh, unrelated verse.
Named twice, like Dabba, unlike Bhalliya
Where Bhalliya's verse just before this one never once said his own name, this verse returns to Dabba's pattern — naming Vīra twice within his own four lines, once mid-verse and once at the close.
Key terms
vīra — “hero” or “brave one” — both this monk's proper name and, used a second time in the same verse, a plain descriptive epithet.
duddamiya — “hard to tame” — the verse's opening word, identical to Dabba's verse (Thag 1.5).
apetalomahaṁsa — “goosebumps vanished” — the idiom for fear overcome shared with Sītavaniya's verse (Thag 1.6).
vijitāvī — “victorious” — one of this chapter's most frequently recurring attainment terms.
parinibbuta — “fully quenched” — the closing epithet shared across several poems in this chapter's formulaic bank.
The text
The text in full: one verse, with its closing attribution. Translation: Bhikkhu Sujato (CC0, SuttaCentral).
§1Once hard to tame, now tamed himself; a hero, content, with doubt overcome; victorious, with goosebumps vanished, Vīra is steadfast, and has become fully quenched.
§2That is how this verse was recited by the senior venerable Vīra.
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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 name 'Vīra' mean?
Correct: B. The same word this verse uses twice, once as name and once as epithet.
Question 2 of 10
How many times does the word 'vīro' appear in this four-line verse?
Correct: C. A double function for the same word.
Question 3 of 10
How does this verse's opening line compare to Dabba's verse (Thag 1.5)?
Correct: C. The chapter's second use of this exact opening.
Question 4 of 10
What idiom does this verse's third line share with Sītavaniya's verse (Thag 1.6)?
Correct: A. The same idiom-family used slightly differently across this chapter.
Question 5 of 10
What pattern becomes visible across Thag 1.5 through 1.8, according to this guide?
Correct: B. A glimpse of formulaic, oral-composition technique.
Question 6 of 10
How does this verse's use of Vīra's own name compare to Bhalliya's verse (Thag 1.7)?
Correct: C. A return to Dabba's pattern of internal self-naming.
Question 7 of 10
What Therīgātha poem uses a similar wordplay on its subject's own name?
Correct: D. A cross-reference to the companion collection's own name-based verse.
Question 8 of 10
What does 'vijitāvī' mean?
Correct: D. One of the chapter's most frequently recurring attainment terms.
Question 9 of 10
What closes this verse?
Correct: D. The same closing formula used across the collection.
Question 10 of 10
Where does this poem fall within Chapter One?
Correct: A. Continuing the chapter's sequence of ten poems.
