Verse 1

Mundaka

Sanskrit (Devanagari)

द्वा सुपर्णा सयुजा सखाया समानं वृक्षं परिषस्वजाते । तयोरन्यः पिप्पलं स्वाद्वत्त्यनश्नन्नन्यो अभिचाकशीति ॥ १॥

Padapatha (Word Split)

द्वा । सुपर्णा । सयुजा । सखाया । समानम् । वृक्षम् । परि-षस्वजाते । तयोः । अन्यः । पिप्पलम् । स्वादु । अत्ति । अनश्नन् । अन्यः । अभि-चाकशीति ॥ १ ॥

IAST Transliteration

dvā suparṇā sayujā sakhāyā samānaṃ vṛkṣaṃ pariṣasvajāte | tayor anyaḥ pippalaṃ svādv atty anaśnann anyo abhicākaśīti || 1 ||

Translation

ငှက်နှစ်ကောင်သည် အတူတကွနေသော မိတ်ဆွေများဖြစ်၍ တစ်ပင်တည်းသော သစ်ပင်ကို ဖက်ကပ်နေကြသည်။ ထိုနှစ်ကောင်အနက် တစ်ကောင်သည် ချိုမြိန်သော ပိပ္ပလ फलကို စားသော်လည်း အခြားတစ်ကောင်သည် မစားဘဲ ကြည့်ရှုနေသည်။

Academic Translation

Two birds, united (and) companions, embrace the same tree. Of the two, one eats the sweet pippala fruit; the other, not eating, looks on.

Verse Context

• Jīva–Īśvara/Ātman distinction at the empirical level; sākṣin (witness) and bhoktṛ (enjoyer); bondage through identification with action/fruit
• Mahavakya: Prepares the ground for ‘tat tvam asi’ by distinguishing the experiencing self from the witnessing Self and implying their deeper unity when ignorance is removed; not itself a Mahāvākya.
• Atharva
• Śaunaka (Atharvaveda tradition; Muṇḍaka) Shakha
• Chandas: Triṣṭubh (closely parallels Ṛgvedic imagery; commonly scanned as triṣṭubh-like)