Sanskrit
अश्रद्धया हुतं दत्तं तपस्तप्तं कृतं च यत् । असदित्युच्यते पार्थ न च तत्प्रेत्य नो इह ॥
aśraddhayā hutaṃ dattaṃ tapas taptaṃ kṛtaṃ ca yat asad ity ucyate pārtha na ca tat pretya no iha
Translation
Whatsoever is wrought without faith, oblation, gift, austerity, or other deed, "Asat" it is called, O Pârtha; it is nought, here or hereafter.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
The closing verse rings back to Arjuna’s opening question, and in doing so quietly answers it by changing the terms of the inquiry. Arjuna asked what happens to those who sacrifice with faith but no scriptural warrant; twenty-seven verses later, Krishna’s real answer is that scriptural correctness was never the deciding axis at all — śraddhā is. Its total absence renders any act “Asat,” void, whatever else was done correctly, which is the sharpest possible statement of the principle this whole chapter has been building toward one guna-graded category at a time. The chapter’s last word: whatever is done aśraddhayā, “without faith,” is Asat — unreal — and na ca tat pretya no iha, “it avails nothing, here or hereafter.” The whole chapter reduces to this: the act is only as real as the faith behind it.
Study deeper
Word by word
- aśraddhayā hutaṃ dattaṃअश्रद्धया हुतं दत्तं
- offered, given without faith (aśraddhayā + hutam + dattam)
- tapas taptaṃ kṛtaṃ ca yatतपस् तप्तं कृतं च यत्
- austerity practised, or [anything] done (tapaḥ + taptam + kṛtam + ca + yat)
- asad ity ucyate pārthaअसद् इत्य् उच्यते पार्थ
- is called 'Asat', O Pārtha (asat + iti + ucyate + pārtha)
- na ca tat pretya no ihaन च तत् प्रेत्य नो इह
- it avails nothing, hereafter or here (na + ca + tat + pretya + no + iha)
Commentary
Site Commentary
It would be easy to expect this final verse to simply add a fourth grade below tamas, but it does something structurally different: “Asat” isn’t a lower step on the same three-guna ladder the chapter has used throughout, it’s a separate axis entirely — real or void — running underneath all three gunas. A tamasic sacrifice, for all its flaws, is still a real sacrifice with real, if poor, consequences; a faithless one, this verse says, was never anything at all, “here or hereafter.” The chapter doesn’t end by ranking faithlessness worst — it ends by placing it outside the ranking altogether.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Concepts
Apply this verse
Lessons
Personal
- There's a difference between doing something poorly and doing it without any real conviction behind it at all — the first is a bad version of a real effort; the second, however competent it looks, may not count as an effort in any way that matters to you later. Check which one you're actually doing.
Professional
- A poorly executed project with real intent behind it is recoverable and still counts as effort; work done competently but with zero genuine investment often turns out to have produced nothing that lasts — treat the presence of real conviction as a separate axis from quality, not a lower grade on the same scale.
Family & Social
- Showing up for family half-heartedly, going through the motions with no real presence, can end up counting for less than showing up imperfectly but genuinely — presence and quality are different axes, and this verse suggests the first is the precondition for the second to mean anything at all.
Ask yourself
A few ways to take this verse past reading. Ticks and the note stay in this browser.