संस्कृत
त्रिविधा भवति श्रद्धा देहिनां सा स्वभावजा । सात्त्विकी राजसी चैव तामसी चेति तां शृणु ॥
trividhā bhavati śraddhā dehināṃ sā svabhāvajā sāttvikī rājasī caiva tāmasī ceti tāṃ śṛṇu
अनुवाद
Threefold is by nature the inborn faith of the embodied—pure, passionate, and dark. Hear thou of these.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
व्याख्या
Krishna answers by sidestepping the either/or Arjuna posed: rather than ranking scripture-abiding faith against unorthodox faith, he says all faith is svabhāva-jā — born of one’s own inborn nature — and therefore already sorted along the same sattva/rajas/tamas typology Chapter 14 used for gunas generally. This single move sets the method for the rest of the chapter: worship, food, sacrifice, austerity, and giving will each get the same threefold treatment before the chapter pivots to the Om Tat Sat formula at the end. Svabhāva-jā — “born of one’s own nature.” Faith is not chosen; it grows from the guṇa-balance of the person, which chapter 14 described. So sorting faith by guṇa is really sorting people — and the same act done by three people can carry three colours.
गहराई से अध्ययन करें
शब्द-दर-शब्द
- trividhā bhavati śraddhāत्रिविधा भवति श्रद्धा
- the faith of the embodied is threefold (trividhā + bhavati + śraddhā)
- dehināṃ sā svabhāvajāदेहिनां सा स्वभावजा
- born of their own nature (dehinām + sā + svabhāva-jā)
- sāttvikī rājasī caivaसात्त्विकी राजसी चैव
- sāttvic, rājasic (sāttvikī + rājasī + ca + eva)
- tāmasī ceti tāṃ śṛṇuतामसी चेति तां शृणु
- and tāmasic — hear of it (tāmasī + ca + iti + tām + śṛṇu)
टीका
Site Commentary
Krishna never actually answers Arjuna’s binary — orthodox versus unorthodox — he replaces it with a completely different axis on which every kind of faith already sits. That’s a specific move: not a compromise between the two given options, but a demonstration that the frame itself was too narrow, and it works only because the substitute axis (sattva/rajas/ tamas) was already established as universal back in Chapter 14.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Site Commentary — Second Reading
“Svabhāva-jā” — born of one’s own nature — is doing more work than the smooth translation suggests: it says faith is not chosen, argued into, or acquired by effort, but arises the way temperament does. That’s a harder claim than it first sounds, since it puts a tamasic believer’s faith on the same causal footing as a sattvic one — neither picked their starting point. The chapter doesn’t resolve whether that’s fatalistic; what it does instead, in the verses that follow, is describe practices detailed enough to imply the starting guna is a diagnosis, not a life sentence.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
अवधारणाएँ
इस श्लोक को अपनाएँ
पाठ
व्यक्तिगत
- When someone asks you to pick between two options they've framed as exhaustive, check whether a third axis you already trust cuts across both — answering with that axis, instead of forcing a pick, resolves the question by making it smaller.
व्यावसायिक
- When a stakeholder frames a decision as binary (build vs. buy, ship vs. wait), consider whether an existing evaluation framework already classifies both options along a more useful axis — reframing the question can matter more than answering it directly.
परिवार और समाज
- When someone close to you poses a false binary in an argument, don't just pick a side — offer the shared framework you both already use for judging things like this, and let the disagreement resolve itself against that instead.
स्वयं से पूछें
इस श्लोक को पढ़ने से आगे ले जाने के कुछ तरीके। टिक और नोट इसी ब्राउज़र में रहते हैं।