Khila Kanda. Adhyaya 5, Brahmana 2. The threefold word of the thunder: da, da, da
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Each mantra is given four ways: the Sanskrit in its Devanagari script, the same sounds in Roman letters, an English translation set in our own voice, and then the line once more in plain words, for a first and unhurried reading.
Not every passage is opened to the same depth. A few central mantras carry the full cross-school commentary, where the schools are set side by side. The rest are kept here whole and faithful, set in their place but not expounded, so the book stays entire and nothing is dropped for being thought minor.
Where the schools read a line differently, the difference is kept open. None is crowned and none is corrected. Each is met on its own terms, and where they contradict, the contradiction is left standing for you to sit with.
The gods hear: restrain yourselves
Three classes of Prajapati's offspring lived the life of studentship with their father Prajapati: the gods, human beings, and the asuras. Having completed their studentship, the gods said, "Let your honour instruct us." To them he uttered this one syllable, "da." He asked, "Have you understood?" They said, "We have understood. You said to us, restrain yourselves." He said, "Yes, you have understood."
The three kinds of Prajapati's children, the gods, human beings, and the demons (asuras), each spent a term living as celibate students under their father. When the gods finished and asked for teaching, Prajapati spoke just one sound, the syllable "da," and asked whether they had grasped it. The gods, knowing their own besetting fault of unruly indulgence, heard in that sound the word damyata, "control yourselves, restrain your senses," and Prajapati confirmed they had understood rightly.
In the commentaries
Sankara takes the single syllable da to work as real instruction because each hearer recognizes the fault it names: the gods, naturally given to enjoyment and lack of restraint, rightly hear damyata, restrain yourselves; the brief utterance lands because consciousness of one's own deficiency completes the teacher's meaning.