Sanskrit
आहारस्त्वपि सर्वस्य त्रिविधो भवति प्रियः । यज्ञस्तपस्तथा दानं तेषां भेदमिमं शृणु ॥
āhāras tv api sarvasya trividho bhavati priyaḥ yajñas tapas tathā dānaṃ teṣāṃ bhedam imaṃ śṛṇu
Translation
The food also which is dear to each is threefold, as also sacrifice, austerity and almsgiving. Hear thou the distinction of these.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
A transition verse that also functions as a table of contents for the rest of the chapter: food, then sacrifice (yajña), austerity (tapas), and gift (dāna) will each get the sattva/rajas/tamas treatment in turn. That the Gita is willing to run something as mundane as diet through the same guna framework it uses for cosmology and ethics elsewhere is characteristic of Chapter 14’s totalizing approach — no domain of ordinary life sits outside the three-guna lens. The chapter’s method announced: the same fivefold list — food, sacrifice, austerity, gift, and (from BG 17.4) worship — each split three ways by the faith behind it. What follows is essentially a taxonomy the figure lays out as a grid.
Study deeper
Word by word
- āhāras tv api sarvasyaआहारस् त्व् अपि सर्वस्य
- even food, for everyone (āhāraḥ + tu + api + sarvasya)
- trividho bhavati priyaḥत्रिविधो भवति प्रियः
- is of three kinds, according to taste (trividhaḥ + bhavati + priyaḥ)
- yajñas tapas tathā dānaṃयज्ञस् तपस् तथा दानं
- and sacrifice, austerity, and gift (yajñaḥ + tapaḥ + tathā + dānam)
- teṣāṃ bhedam imaṃ śṛṇuतेषां भेदं इमं शृणु
- hear this distinction of theirs (teṣām + bhedam + imam + śṛṇu)
Commentary
Site Commentary
Few verses in the Gita are this openly metatextual — Krishna essentially pauses the teaching to hand Arjuna a table of contents, naming all four categories and the order they’ll arrive in before starting the first one. That transparency changes how the next fifteen verses should be read: not as fifteen separate lessons but as one lesson, the guna test, run four times — and knowing that in advance is itself part of the teaching.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Concepts
Apply this verse
Lessons
Personal
- When you're about to walk yourself through several examples of the same underlying principle, say up front how many there are and what they share — telling yourself the shape of what's coming changes how usefully you absorb each individual case.
Professional
- Before diving into a multi-part review or audit, state the framework and the categories up front, the way this verse does — a stated roadmap turns a list of separate findings into one repeated demonstration of the same underlying test.
Family & Social
- When you're about to give feedback across several situations at once, name the pattern first — 'here's the one thing I'm pointing out a few different ways' — so it lands as one coherent lesson instead of a string of separate complaints.
Ask yourself
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