Chapter 17 · Verse 13·Spoken by Krishna
विधिहीनमसृष्टान्नं मन्त्रहीनमदक्षिणम्।श्रद्धाविरहितं यज्ञं तामसं परिचक्षते
vidhi-hīnam asṛiṣhṭānnaṁ mantra-hīnam adakṣhiṇam śhraddhā-virahitaṁ yajñaṁ tāmasaṁ parichakṣhate
A sacrifice offered against the rules of scripture, with no food given out, with no chanting of the sacred verses, with no gifts to the priests, and empty of faith: this they call a sacrifice of darkness.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
his verse defines the tamasic sacrifice, the lowest of the three kinds Krishna is describing. Tamas is the quality of darkness, inertia, and dullness. A sacrifice (yajna, a ritual offering) ruled by tamas is named by what it lacks, and Krishna lists five absences in a row. There is no vidhi, no prescribed rule or procedure laid down by scripture. There is no asrishta-anna, no food prepared and distributed to the brahmins and the rest. There is no mantra, no sacred verse recited in its proper pitch and syllables. There is no dakshina, the gift or fee due to the priests who officiate. And, at the root, there is no shraddha, no faith. The wise, the seers, call such a sacrifice tamasic.
Braided from 13 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Ānandagiri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha
The first and governing fault is that the rite is performed against scripture, in disobedience to its rule, doing the reverse of what the texts teach. This is not a small carelessness within an otherwise valid rite; it is a rite cut loose from the authority that would make it a sacrifice at all. Because it ignores the prescribed procedure, the proper food-offering, the correct mantras, and the priest's gift, what remains is a sacrifice in form only, hollowed of its very substance.
Braided from 6 commentators
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrī Puruṣottama · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śaṅkarācārya
The deepest of the five absences is the lack of faith, and the commentators trace it to the doer's inner state rather than to mere ritual error. The faithlessness shows itself as aversion to the priests and a contempt for the whole enterprise, so that the brahmins are looked on with enmity and there is no impulse to give them anything. Behind it lies dullness of mind: the doer trusts neither the scriptures, nor their mantras, nor the unseen fruit of sacrifice, has no understanding of his own, and refuses to listen to anyone who does. The other faults follow from this faithlessness; it is the soil in which they grow.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda
Because it is not performed according to scripture, the tamasic sacrifice produces no benefit at all, neither seen nor unseen. The man who performs it gains no merit. A rajasic sacrifice, even when the heart is impure, still follows scripture and so still carries the unseen potency that yields a fruit; but the tamasic, standing outside scripture, has no such hidden power whatsoever, and this is precisely how far it falls below the rajasic. So the doer receives nothing in this world and nothing in the world beyond.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
This source works out the inner logic of the contrast between the rajasic and the tamasic sacrifice. The point is that scriptural form, even without purity of heart, still generates an unseen potency (apurva) that bears fruit; this is why the rajasic rite, performed according to scripture, still works. The tamasic rite, being performed against scripture, generates no such unseen potency at all, and that total absence of fruit-bearing power is the measure of its deficiency. The same source also counts the divisions of the tamasic sacrifice arithmetically: each of the five qualifications taken singly gives five kinds, all five gathered together give one more, and combinations of two, three, or four give many further divisions.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Śuddhādvaita
This source reads the five absences as more than five procedural faults. They are the five doors through which the divine frame of the sacrifice would have entered the rite, each closed in turn: rule, food, mantra, gift, and faith are exactly the places where the godward sacrifice would have stood, and the tamasic rite fails at every one. The practical counsel that follows is that the devotee is to turn away from such a sacrifice, and not toward the rajasic sacrifice that aims at heaven either, but toward the sattvic sacrifice from which no fruit is sought except the Lord's grace.
Śrī Puruṣottama
Modern
This source, looking ahead, insists that the word tapas (austerity) that the following verses take up should not be read narrowly as forest penance or bodily mortification in the manner of yoga. Drawing on Manu, it gives tapas a comprehensive meaning: it is sacrifice, study of the Veda, and whatever is one's own proper duty according to one's class, such as fighting for the warrior or trade for the merchant. This wide sense of austerity is what the next verses are meant to carry.
Lokmanya Tilak
Modern
This source dwells on the rationalizing excuses the tamasic doer makes for each omission, and exposes them as self-serving. He drops the rule out of indifference; he refuses to feed the brahmins on the theory that free food breeds laziness; he skips the mantras on the theory that the offering works by itself; he withholds the gift on the theory that supported brahmins are a burden. The source answers that whatever the brahmins may become, the doer himself, by abandoning his own duty, has certainly become lazy. It also links this verse to the chapter's wider verdict, that what is offered without faith is asat, and to the Gita's warning that those sunk in tamas go downward, so that such a man earns no good fruit while still incurring the punishment of his wrong conduct.
Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If a sacrifice is only nominal and yields nothing, why does the Gita bother to name and condemn it rather than simply ignore it?
Because the verse is not really cataloguing a ritual; it is diagnosing a state of mind. The five absences are not five accidents but symptoms of one inner condition, faithlessness rooted in dullness, that distrusts scripture, its mantras, and the very idea of an unseen fruit, and refuses to be taught. Naming the tamasic sacrifice lets you recognize that condition in yourself.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Ramsukhdas
And the rite is not harmless just because it earns no merit. Because it is performed against scripture it carries no fruit-bearing power at all, so the doer gets nothing in this world or the next; but he does not thereby escape consequence. The man who abandons his own duty under cover of clever excuses has made himself idle and is acting with disregard, and for that disregard he still incurs his downward result. So the verse warns precisely so that you will not mistake an empty, self-excusing performance for a real offering.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
The condemnation also marks a direction to turn. Once you see the tamasic rite for what it is, the counsel is not to climb only as far as the rajasic sacrifice that bargains for heaven, but to move toward the sattvic sacrifice offered with faith and seeking no reward beyond grace itself.
Śrī Puruṣottama
Contemplation
Notice how the tamasic doer always has a reason ready for what he leaves out. The brahmins would only grow lazy if I fed them. The offering surely works on its own, so why bother with the mantras. A supported priest is just a burden on the earth, so why give the gift. Each excuse sounds practical, even shrewd. But watch where the argument never turns: back on the speaker himself. While he worries that others might become idle, he has quietly dropped his own duty and become idle in fact. When you catch yourself trimming away the demanding parts of a good action with a tidy rationale, pause and ask whether the rationale is really about the worthiness of the action, or about sparing yourself. The faith this verse asks for is not blind; it is the willingness to do the thing fully and to listen to someone who knows, instead of trusting only your own convenience.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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