Poetry
ကိုးခန့်ပျို့
Not translated into English
Bhikkhu Ratthasara · 1523
Synopsis
The poem puts into verse an account of the Buddha's previous lives. In Benares, King Esukari has no son; his chaplain threatens to cut down a banyan tree inhabited by a deity, and obtains that four divine beings be born, not as the king's sons, but as the chaplain's sons. Hatthipala, Gopala, Assapala and Ajapala grow up; despite their family's efforts to hold them back, the eldest leaves home to become an ascetic, and his brothers follow him one after another.
Context
Composed at the request of King Minkhaung II, the text adapts the five hundred and ninth tale of the Pali collection of previous lives, in nine long sections; it is known under three titles, one of which is Hatthipala pyo. The pyo, a Burmese genre of verse narrative drawn from the lives of the Buddha, runs to two or three hundred stanzas of four-syllable lines, whose rhymes “climb” from the end of one line to the beginning of the following ones; the oldest surviving Burmese poems largely belong to this genre.
Who it is for
A long poem in classical Burmese, difficult to read without notes on the Buddhist stories; no French translation.
Prizes and reception
One of the best-known pyo of Burma, still taught in schools, even though its author owes his reputation first of all to another poem.
Sources for this page 5
The pages consulted to check this page.