Sanskrit
यजन्ते सात्त्विका देवान्यक्षरक्षांसि राजसाः । प्रेतान्भूतगणांश्चान्ये यजन्ते तामसा जनाः ॥
yajante sāttvikā devān yakṣarakṣāṃsi rājasāḥ pretān bhūtagaṇāṃś cānye yajante tāmasā janāḥ
Translation
Pure men worship the Gods; the passionate the gnomes and giants; the others, the dark folk, worship ghosts and troops of nature-spirits.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
The first concrete application of verse 2’s typology, and it reads less as a literal cosmology of who’s out there to worship than as a diagnostic: what a person is drawn to venerate — luminous ideals, power-and-wealth spirits (yakṣas and rākṣasas, in the older folk taxonomy), or restless ghosts and minor spirits (pretas and bhūtas) — gives away which guna is running the show. The devotional object is a mirror of the devotee’s inner state, not an independent fact about the universe. The first application of the sort, to the object of worship: the sāttvic reach upward (the gods), the rājasic sideways (nature-spirits of power), the tāmasic downward (the dead, the ghosts). The figure on the chapter page runs this same three-way sort across worship, food, sacrifice, austerity, and gift.
Study deeper
Word by word
- yajante sāttvikā devānयजन्ते सात्त्विका देवान्
- the sāttvic worship the gods (yajante + sāttvikāḥ + devān)
- yakṣarakṣāṃsi rājasāḥयक्षरक्षांसि राजसाः
- the rājasic, yakṣas and rākṣasas (yakṣa-rakṣāṃsi + rājasāḥ)
- pretān bhūtagaṇāṃś cānyeप्रेतान् भूतगणांश् चान्ये
- and others, the departed and hosts of spirits (pretān + bhūta-gaṇān + ca + anye)
- yajante tāmasā janāḥयजन्ते तामसा जनाः
- the tāmasic folk worship (yajante + tāmasāḥ + janāḥ)
Commentary
Site Commentary
Every other category the chapter grades — food, sacrifice, austerity, gift — gets a dedicated verse per guna, three full verses each. Worship is the one exception: all three tiers get compressed into this single line, functioning less as a fourth category on equal footing and more as a quick proof-of-concept before the chapter commits to the fuller three-verse treatment for everything that follows.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Concepts
Apply this verse
Lessons
Personal
- When you're trying out a new way of evaluating things in your own life, test it first on a quick, low-stakes example before building the full, elaborate version — a compressed trial run tells you fast whether the framework actually holds.
Professional
- Before rolling out a new evaluation rubric across every category of work, pilot it compressed on one small category first — a one-line proof of concept surfaces whether the framework holds before you invest in the full three-tier version.
Family & Social
- When introducing a new household rule or evaluation to your family, try a small compressed version on one low-stakes case before making it the standard for everything — a quick trial reveals problems before they're baked into the bigger system.
Ask yourself
A few ways to take this verse past reading. Ticks and the note stay in this browser.