- English translation
When you enter a community whose people worship a calf, help provide its fodder and feed it.
- Literal wording
If you enter a town that worships a calf, cut fodder for it and feed it.
- Meaning and lesson
The saying counsels restraint when a newcomer faces a community united behind a custom or conviction. Directly challenging such a group can invite harm, so it advises outward compliance rather than open resistance.
Its exaggerated image frames accommodation as self-protection, not approval of the group’s belief or conduct. It can express the calculation that, in an unfriendly setting, opposing a powerful consensus may be riskier than temporarily adapting to it.
- When it is used
It can be said when someone urges a newcomer to adapt discreetly to a group’s established ways rather than provoke conflict through direct opposition. Its deliberately sharp image should not be taken as endorsing the belief or conduct described.
Cite or copy proverb
How this record reached us: Editorially sourced.
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