At first glance, these two verses from the Dhammapada may look like a volley of polemic against the Buddhists' rivals for popular influence, the brahmin priests. The impression will not last long, however. Buddhist complaints against brahmins do not normally allege savage and degenerate criminality; they lament rather the corruption of present-day brahmins who have fallen from the high standards set by the wise and diligent priests of old. The Buddha is very commonly represented as praising the true brahmin, the one who seeks enlightenment, cultivating restraint and virtue.

The later Pāli commentarial tradition automatically interprets these verses as a celebration of the achievements of the truth-seeker who follows in the footsteps of the Buddha and finds enlightenment through spiritual cultivation. The brahmin is this seeker, and his victims are metaphors: mother and father are craving and egoism or self-conceit, the two kings are the false beliefs in eternalism and annihilationism, the country is the senses and their spheres, the attendant (or revenue officer) is the pursuit of sensory pleasure, and the tiger's domain is the group of five hindrances of which sceptical doubt, seen as a source of fear like the tiger, is the fifth member.