Chapter 16 · Verse 7·Spoken by Krishna
प्रवृत्तिं च निवृत्तिं च जना न विदुरासुराः।न शौचं नापि चाचारो न सत्यं तेषु विद्यते
pravṛittiṁ cha nivṛittiṁ cha janā na vidur āsurāḥ na śhauchaṁ nāpi chāchāro na satyaṁ teṣhu vidyate
Demonic people do not understand what should be done and what should not be done. In them there is no purity, no good conduct, no truth.
Word by Word
Saved for this reading session
Three movements · tap a label to switch
Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
Audio from the Gītā Supersite, IIT Kanpur
Synthesis · a glossed leaf
machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
he verse names the very first thing that is missing in people of demonic nature: they do not know pravritti and nivritti. Pravritti means engagement, moving forward into the action that should be done; nivritti means turning away, holding back from what should be left alone. So the asuras lack the basic ability to tell what to do from what to refrain from. Several commentators stress that this is the foundational failure, the one from which all the rest follows: without this discrimination a person cannot even begin a life of dharma, righteous duty.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Swami Sivananda · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Ramsukhdas · Sant Jñāneśvar
This not-knowing is not only practical confusion; it is a failure of relation to scripture. Many commentators read pravritti and nivritti as the injunctions and prohibitions of the Veda. The word 'and' (cha) in the verse is taken to point beyond the two actions to the very texts that establish them: the injunctive sentences that command engagement and the prohibitive sentences that forbid certain acts. The asuras do not know these because they have no faith in the Vedas, and so the whole apparatus of right and wrong action falls away for them.
Braided from 7 commentators
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīla Baladeva · Rāmānujācārya · Vallabhācārya · Swami Sivananda
Because that discrimination is gone, three further things are declared absent in them: shaucha (purity, both outer cleanness of body and inner cleanness of mind), achara (right conduct, the established practices of disciplined living), and satya (truth, speech that is true, kindly, and beneficial to beings). The commentators note that purity and truth could be counted as part of conduct, yet the verse lists them separately for emphasis, by a traditional maxim that names a class and then names notable members within it. The asuras are well known as impure, ill-conducted, given to maya or guile, and speakers of untruth.
Braided from 12 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Puruṣottama · Vallabhācārya · Sant Jñāneśvar
This whole verse opens an extended portrait. Several commentators observe that Krishna here begins setting out the demonic endowment in full, across about twelve verses, precisely so that it can be recognized and rejected. The point of describing what is to be abandoned is to make it directly known, since one cannot turn away from a fault one cannot see. So the harsh description is diagnostic, not merely condemnatory.
Braided from 7 commentators
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Dhanapati Sūri
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read pravritti and nivritti chiefly in terms of dharma and the means of the human goal. Engagement is the setting-to-work in the duty to be done, the means to what a person rightly seeks; turning-away is its opposite, the turning back from the cause of harm. They identify the two with the Veda's injunction-sentences and prohibition-sentences, the very knowledge of dharma and adharma as the desired and the undesired causes. One develops this carefully: purity, conduct, and truth could all be folded into conduct, yet the verse names purity and truth apart by the maxim of 'the brahmin and the wandering renunciant', which lists a whole class and then singles out its notable members. The asuras lack all of this because they are by nature impure, ill-conducted, given to maya, and speakers of untruth.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
These commentators read pravritti and nivritti as the Vedic duty that is at once the means of prosperity and the means of liberation, so the two cover both worldly well-being and final release. They give shaucha and achara a precise, linked sense: purity is the scriptural fitness, outer and inner, that qualifies one for Vedic action, and conduct is the disciplined practice, such as the twilight-worship and the rest, by which that very purity is produced. They cite the rule that one who omits the twilight-worship is ever impure and unfit for all rites, so conduct is the cause and purity the effect. Truth is glossed as right knowledge and speech for the welfare of beings. Without the basic pravritti-nivritti distinction the candidate cannot even begin the life of dharma.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Śuddhādvaita
These commentators reframe the whole distinction around the Lord and his service. Pravritti is engagement, by the Lord's wish, in the dharmas and matters favourable to his service; nivritti is the drawing back from what is unfavourable to it. The asuras' ignorance is therefore not a failure of ordinary practical reason but the not-knowing of what helps and what hinders devotion to the Lord. Shaucha is read inwardly to match: it is the purification of the body fit for the Lord's service, outer and inner, not a generic ritual hygiene. One source supports the harshness with the saying that the asuras' inclining is nowhere proper, since mental, bodily and verbal faults stand in their every act and in every scripture that prescribes it, so they accept no truth at all. The asura is thus defined by being structurally removed from the frame of the Lord that alone makes engagement and withdrawal intelligible.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Kashmir Shaivism
This commentator reads pravritti and nivritti not as outward action but as two metaphysical questions. Pravritti is the question 'from what has this arisen?' and nivritti is the question 'where does it dissolve?'. On this reading the asuras' failure is that they do not inquire into the origin and the dissolution of things; they lack the contemplative questioning about source and end.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
These commentators read pravritti as engagement in dharma, the moving forward into what is right, and nivritti as turning away from adharma, the standing back from what is wrong. One stresses that this opening sign of the demonic disposition is a single failure of viveka, discrimination: the very capacity to know what one should and should not do is absent, and where that is absent, cleanness, conduct and truth cannot stand. Another, reading the verse as the start of the twelve-verse demonic portrait, ties the not-knowing to a lack of faith in the Vedas and glosses truth as speech about things as actually seen and beneficial to beings, likening the asuras' teaching to that of vultures and jackals. The Marathi devotional voice paints the asura as one whose mind is in deep dark night over good action and abstention, who could no more become pure than a liquor pot could become holy, who behaves unrestrained like grazing sheep or blowing wind, and whose speech rises like dense dark smoke.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
These commentators carry the verse into present life and the inner path. One adds a Self-knowledge dimension: the demonic cannot grasp the idea of a Self apart from the body, actionless and merely watching the play of the gunas; working only for the body and the senses, greedy and cruel, they have no good conduct and speak no loving words. The other reads the verse as the point where demonic tendency first enters even the seeker's life, as the failure to discriminate engagement from withdrawal, and notes that some people do know yet are too weighted down to act on it. He adds that this discrimination can be awakened through guru, scripture and reflection, and that it stirs in calamity, at a sacred place, or in the presence of a great soul. He also observes that Krishna still calls these people 'janah', men, here, for they keep human form and the divine endowment can yet rise in them if they turn rightly, though from this point on words proper to true humanity are withheld from them. Neither of these readings is sectarian; both stay close to non-sectarian devotional Vedanta.
Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If the asuras cannot even tell right action from wrong, is their condition a moral failure they are guilty of, or a blindness they cannot help, and can such a person ever change?
The verse describes a real incapacity, not a momentary slip: people of demonic nature do not know pravritti from nivritti, and so purity, conduct and truth cannot stand in them. This is presented as a settled disposition, a failure of the basic discrimination from which everything else follows.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Rāmānujācārya
Yet the whole point of Krishna spelling out this portrait across many verses is so it can be recognized and rejected. The fault is described precisely to make it directly known, since one cannot turn from a defect one cannot see; so the description is meant to be diagnostic and corrective, not just a sentence passed.
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Vallabhācārya
And the door is not closed. The discriminating power lives in every person and can be reawakened through teacher, scripture and reflection, and through the shocks of calamity or the grace of a holy presence; some who seem demonic in fact do know but are merely too weighted down to act. Notably, Krishna still calls them 'men' here, for they keep human form and the divine endowment can yet rise in them if they take the right turn.
Swami Ramsukhdas
Contemplation
Take this verse not as a label for other people but as a mirror held up to your own life. The first sign of a coarsening of the heart is not some dramatic sin; it is the quiet loss of discrimination, the failure to ask clearly what you should move toward and what you should hold back from. Notice where that question has gone dim in you. The good news is that this discrimination, called vivekashakti, lives in every person and can be reawakened. It wakes through the guidance of a teacher, through scripture, and through honest reflection. It also stirs when calamity falls, when a strange event arrests the mind, in the company of a great soul, or on a visit to a sacred place. You have a freedom no animal has: a human birth is the very ground where this power can be developed, so use the turn while it is yours.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
Pull up a chair.
You have come to sit with this verse. When you are ready to hear the translators and the commentators in full, tap a name in The seating.