Public-domain Kabir doha: बुरा जो देखन मैं चला

This doha, traditionally attributed to Kabir, turns on a grammatical reversal: the speaker first searches outward for बुरा, then turns दिल inward and finds that the standard of comparison is himself. Its compactness depends on older vernacular forms and poetic syntax, so it must not be treated as a model sentence in present-day Standard Hindi.

Kabir's sayings circulated orally and survive in multiple recensions. The text below follows the public-domain printed reading reproduced in कविता-कौमुदी, including देखन, मिलिया, कोय, खोजौं, आपना, मुझसा. Widely quoted modern versions replace several of those forms. The variation is part of the evidence; no single social-media spelling should be presented as an uncontested original.

The selected public-domain reading

The translation supplies someone, I found, and there was. The verse does not. Repetition of बुरा and कोय carries the parallel structure, while the search moves from the external world to आपना दिल. That shift, rather than a list of moral claims, produces the self-correction.

A necessary note on textual variation

Another public-domain witness, कबीर वचनावली, prints a closely related line with forms such as में for मैं, खोजों for खोजौं, and होय for final कोय in one digitized transcription. A common modern recitation is different again:

The alternations दिल/मन, खोजौं/खोजा, and मुझसा/मुझसे affect grammar as well as spelling. मुझसा literally builds a “like me” comparison, whereas modern मुझसे बुरा uses से as the standard of comparison. Quoting one version is legitimate; silently mixing half-lines from different versions and calling the result “the original” is not.

This page analyzes the two-line कविता-कौमुदी reading above. The source is public domain, and only the short doha needed for grammatical analysis is quoted.

Line 1: purpose, motion, and an omitted object

The first half can be segmented as बुरा | जो | देखन | मैं | चला.

बुरा as “a bad person”

Adjective बुरा appears without an overt noun such as आदमी or व्यक्ति. It is substantivized: “a bad one / someone bad.” The line's opening places this moral category before the searcher, making outward judgment the point of departure.

Modern conversational Hindi can also substantivize adjectives, but it would usually make the intended human plural or indefinite clearer:

The doha's बुरा is deliberately more compact than बुरा व्यक्ति or दूसरों में बुराई. Repeating it after the caesura—बुरा न मिलिया कोय—turns the category back into a result: no “bad one” was found.

जो without an overt तो/सो

In modern teaching, learners often meet complete pairs such as जो … वह/सो or जब … तब/तो. Poetry can leave the correlate unexpressed. Here जो is interpreted in a temporal-relative way, roughly “when/as.” The reader supplies the relation between going out to seek and failing to find.

The missing partner is not evidence that the line is ungrammatical. It is a poetic compression that avoids a connective and lets बुरा frame both halves.

देखन as an older purpose form

देखन is an older or regionally colored infinitival/purpose form (literary/archaic in Standard Hindi). In context, बुरा देखन … चला means “went to see/seek the bad.” Modern Standard Hindi would normally use देखने before a motion verb or, more idiomatically here, खोजने:

Do not infer a productive rule that modern infinitives lose -ा before every motion verb. The modern construction is -ने + जाना/निकलना; the doha preserves देखन as part of its historical-poetic register.

मैं चला: the speaker enters last

The neutral modern order would more readily be मैं बुरा देखने चला, with the subject first. The poem delays मैं until after बुरा जो देखन. That order initially foregrounds “badness” as the object of attention and then reveals the judging I.

Masculine singular चला presents a male poetic speaker. It also licenses the omitted goal or outward direction: he “went off,” even though no location is stated.

Line 1 result: मिलिया and कोय

मिलिया is an older perfective form corresponding approximately to modern मिला (archaic/poetic). The construction is intransitive: कोय “anyone” is the not-found participant, while बुरा predicates badness of that participant. There is no ergative मैंने because the line is not structured as modern transitive मैंने किसी को नहीं पाया.

Modern मिलना commonly marks the experiencer with को: मुझे. The poem omits the experiencer because मैं has just established it. कोय corresponds to modern कोई, but its rhyme with final कोय in line 2 and its compact shape belong to the verse's sound pattern.

Line 2: turning the search inward

The second line mirrors the first with जो … न कोय, but changes the search domain from unnamed others to दिल.

दिल खोजौं आपना

In this witness, खोजौं is an older first-person form (archaic/poetic), interpreted in the conditional-temporal sequence as the speaker's inward search. It should not be conjugated as though it were a regular modern present. Neutral modern narration would use मैंने … खोजा/टटोला.

आपना is an older/regional reflexive form corresponding to modern Standard Hindi अपना. It points back to the clause's understood first-person subject: “my own.” Since दिल is masculine singular, the form ends in -ा. The reflexive makes the reversal explicit—the searcher examines what belongs to himself, not another person's heart.

Notice the echoed reflexive अपना … अपनी ही. Modern prose spells out the experiencer and the result, while the doha lets parallelism do that work.

मुझसा: the speaker as comparison standard

मुझसा can be analyzed as oblique first-person मुझ plus similarity/comparison सा, written together in the witness. Modern editorial spelling might show मुझ-सा. The phrase means “like me / comparable to me,” so मुझसा बुरा न कोय says no bad person is like the speaker—pragmatically, none is worse.

The common modernized variant मुझसे बुरा makes the scalar comparison explicit with से:

The doha does not merely replace “other people are bad” with “I am bad.” By making मुझसा/मुझसे the standard, it dramatizes the collapse of the speaker's authority to rank others.

Ten instructive forms

Common Mistakes

Reading the line as ordinary modern SVO

Treating देखन as a modern bare stem to imitate

Requiring an overt correlate after every जो

Silently presenting a modernized mixture as the sole original

Key Takeaways

• The selected witness preserves older देखन, मिलिया, कोय, खोजौं, आपना, not productive modern Standard Hindi forms.
• जो can occur without an overt correlate in compressed poetic syntax.
• In the doha's first result, मिलना is not a transitive English-style “find” construction.
• मुझसा uses similarity -सा; modernized मुझसे बुरा instead uses से as a comparison standard.
• Parallel outward and inward searches create the ethical reversal; textual variation must be labeled rather than silently blended.

From poetic order to neutral prose

The verse balances two searches around the repeated result बुरा … न … कोय. Line 1 sends मैं outward; line 2 places दिल … आपना at the center. Parallel syntax invites comparison before the final मुझसा reverses the initial judgment. Rhyme and ellipsis make the realization feel sudden.

A modern neutral paraphrase has to supply agents, postpositions, and temporal correlates:

The paraphrase explains the ethical inference and uses explicit जब … तो twice. It is grammatically accessible, but it sacrifices the doha's disciplined ambiguity: the original lets the listener make the inward turn rather than stating the lesson as advice.