Reading guide
A wake-up call, addressed by name three times
‘Uṭṭhehi nisīda kātiyāna’ opens the poem, and the name recurs in the fourth and fifth verses too — ‘anuyuñjittha jhāya kātiyāna’, ‘jhāyāhi jināhi kātiyāna’. Unlike Thag 6.4 (Kulla), where the address-by-name appears to come from a second, instructing voice within a single poem's internal drama, this poem is addressed to Kātiyāna throughout, without any reply voiced in his own words — the poem is entirely exhortation, not dialogue.
'Make a safe island of yourself'
The second verse's central line, ‘so karohi sudīpamattano tvaṅ, na hi tāṇaṅ tava vijjateva aññaṅ’, ‘make a safe island of yourself, for you have no other shelter’, uses the same self-reliance image (dīpa, island/lamp) found in the well-known attā-dīpa formula elsewhere in the wider canon. This reading guide notes the shared image without asserting this poem directly quotes or is quoted by any specific other text.
A kinsman of Indra, addressed by epithet
The sixth verse switches from the name Kātiyāna to an epithet, ‘indasagotta’, ‘kinsman of Indra’ — suggesting a brahmin lineage claim traced to the Vedic deity, now addressed directly to shake off Māra ‘like a creeper bent by wind’.
This book's longest poem so far
At twenty-six translated lines — six verses, the last extended to six lines rather than four — this is the longest poem in the Book of the Sixes to this point, matched later in this same book by Thag 6.8 (Migajāla), which shares the identical extension pattern.
Extinguished like a flame quenched by water
The fifth verse's closing image, ‘parinibbāhisi vārināva joti’, ‘you'll be extinguished as a flame by water’, gives a concrete physical picture for parinibbāna (final extinguishment) — not annihilation by violence, but the natural quenching of what has run out of fuel.
Key terms
The text
§1Get up, Kātiyāna, and sit! Don’t sleep too much, be wakeful. Don’t be lazy and let the kinsman of the negligent, the King of Death, catch you in his trap.
§2Like a wave in the mighty ocean, rebirth and old age sweep you under. Make a safe island of yourself, for you have no other shelter.
§3The teacher has mastered this path, which transcends chains, and the fear of birth and old age. Be diligent in the first and final watches of the night, and dedicate yourself to practice.
§4Free yourself from your former bonds! Wearing your outer robe, with shaven head, eating almsfood, don’t delight in play or sleep, dedicate yourself to absorption, Kātiyāna.
§5Meditate and conquer, Kātiyāna, you’re an expert in the path to sanctuary from the yoke. Having arrived at unexcelled purity, you’ll be extinguished as a flame by water.
§6A lamp of feeble flame is bent down by the wind, like a creeper; just so, kinsman of Indra, shake off Māra, without grasping. Free of lust for feelings, await your time here, cooled.
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