Sanskrit
अधिभूतं क्षरो भावः पुरुषश्चाधिदैवतम् । अधियज्ञोऽहमेवात्र देहे देहभृतां वर ॥
adhibhūtaṃ kṣaro bhāvaḥ puruṣaś cādhidaivatam adhiyajño'ham evātra dehe dehabhṛtāṃ vara
Translation
Knowledge of the Elements concerns My perishable nature, and knowledge of the Shining Ones concerns the life-giving energy; the knowledge of Sacrifice tells of Me, as wearing the body, O best of living beings.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
The remaining three terms close out in a single verse: adhibhuta is Krishna’s own perishable nature, adhidaiva is purusha, the life-force behind the shining ones, and adhiyajna — sacrifice itself — turns out to be Krishna as embodied here, in the body of every being. Six questions, six answers, in four verses; the discourse could have stopped there, but Arjuna’s seventh question, about death, is what Krishna actually wants to talk about. Adhiyajño ‘ham eva atra dehe — “the adhiyajña is I, right here in the body” — collapses the ritual term into an indwelling presence, which is why the next question, about dying, can be answered as an act of remembrance rather than an act of ceremony.
Study deeper
Word by word
- adhibhūtaṃ kṣaro bhāvaḥअधिभूतं क्षरो भावः
- adhibhūta is perishable nature (adhibhūtam + kṣaraḥ + bhāvaḥ)
- puruṣaś cādhidaivatamपुरुषश् चाधिदैवतं
- and puruṣa is the adhidaiva (puruṣaḥ + ca + adhidaivatam)
- adhiyajño'ham evātra deheअधियज्ञोऽहं एवात्र देहे
- the adhiyajña is I Myself, here in the body (adhiyajñaḥ + aham + eva + atra + dehe)
- dehabhṛtāṃ varaदेहभृतां वर
- O best of the embodied (deha-bhṛtām + vara)
Commentary
Site Commentary
Four verses close out six formal definitions; the chapter still has twenty-four verses left to run on a seventh question nobody scored as the headline. The proportion is itself an argument: how much space a teacher gives a topic, relative to how it was originally framed, tells you what they actually think matters more than the framing did.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Apply this verse
Lessons
Personal
- Notice how much time you actually spend on a stated priority versus an unstated one — the real ranking of what matters to you shows up in where your attention goes, not in which item you listed first.
Professional
- When a project brief lists several deliverables, watch which one ends up consuming most of the team's actual time — that allocation, not the original list order, reveals what the team has implicitly decided matters most.
Family & Social
- Pay attention to which topics a conversation keeps returning to, regardless of what was announced as the reason for talking — the recurring one is usually the one that actually needed addressing.
Ask yourself
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