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	---> MORE Thai Proverbs: _________________________________ Keeping your head down Standing the World on its Head Beware of Appearances Keeping Your Head Down When the Cat's Away You've Got to be Stupid Before You Get Wise Measuring Someone's Footprint Be compliant! Snake Snake Fish Fish Bid Tong Lang Phra - To do good by stealth The Menacing Tiger Little birds nest according to their size Keeping Your Head Down The Chameleon That Lost Its Head Out of Pride Wisdom come from Stupidity Follow the old, and the dogs won't bite you LOOKING AT THE TSUNAMI DISASTER Measuring Someone's Footprint One drop of honey Keeping Your Head Down Avoiding Victory Blame and Responsibility Beware of Appearances When the cat’s away, the mice play Water, water everywhere…

Keeping your head down

If you've been in Thailand more than a couple of days, you're likely to have come to the conclusion that for all the feeling of being at home here, there are definitely aspects of behaviour and ways of life that are not the same as you're used to back where you've come from - at least if it's to the west of this country. And nothing makes that clearer than some of the proverbs and sayings you come across.

Take what the brahmin beggar Chuchok tells his rebellious young wife Amittada in the extremely popular Buddhist birth story known as the Wetsundorn Chadok. If you're Thai there's no way you're going to have missed bumping up against one or other version of this classic during your school years. But even if you did, you'd have seen cartoon versions in the comics, modern dramatisations on TV, and pictorial renderings at one of your local temples…not to speak of the recitation of the entire drama at the leading temple of your locality the week before the Loy Krathong festival. So you'll already know the lecherous but potent old brahmin has got himself a fragrant little chit of a wife as repayment of an otherwise non-performing debt. And that at first at least she gives him every sort of satisfaction, to the extent that he can't get himself back to his normal routine of begging. Unfortunately, this excellence of hers gives rise to trouble in their village, the other men comparing their wives to Amittada and finding them drastically wanting - and letting them know as much. Which leads to the other wives ganging up on Amittada and give her such a chewing over that she returns to Chuchok and gives him the works. No more satisfaction for him, unless he undertakes an adventure for her that could well be his last.

And what does Chuchok tell his irate spouse? As a way of calming her, he says, choei ben phra, chana ben maan - literally, 'Passivity is a lord, victory the devil'. Or more colloquially, 'Victory (success/achievement) is infinitely more trouble in the long run than staying quiet and keeping your head down'. Now admittedly, this isn't the most exact of translations, but then isn't the difficulty of adequately translating, let alone matching this maxim, proof in itself of the cultural difference implied here? I mean, can you come up with an English saying that carries a similar message? The nearest I can get is, 'Better to be safe than sorry' and that seems to be far less sweeping than what is implied by Chuchok. Anyway, the brahmin doesn't manage to convince his little cutie to follow his advice, and when she makes clear what he'll be missing if she doesn't get what she wants, off he goes. And since he succeeds in his undertaking but dies as a result of that success, from the Thai standpoint the validity of the proverb is confirmed and cultural expectation satisfied.

OThough come to think of it, the West isn't without the odd example or two of the price of victory. What did the Greek general Pyrrhus say after one apparently successful but costly military encounter?

“One more such victory and we are lost.”