Six traits, set beside the twenty-six, name what to lay down rather than take up.
It reads, at first glance, like a list of other people's failings. Read closely, it asks something harder: to find where pretence, arrogance, or harshness has already taken root in you.
Hypocrisy, arrogance, self-conceit, anger, harshness, and ignorance: these belong to one born to the demonic endowment, Arjuna.
The reading read whole, as one unhurried piece
Where it stands
Krishna has just closed the long list of divine qualities, twenty-six in all, the wealth of one born toward freedom. Now, in a single compact verse, he turns to state the opposite inheritance, the demonic endowment, before he tells Arjuna in the next verse what each of these two fruits actually is.
The teaching
Six traits are named here, briskly and without softening: pretence, arrogance, conceit, anger, harshness, and ignorance. Pretence is carrying a banner of dharma you do not actually hold, righteousness performed for an audience rather than lived quietly for its own sake. Arrogance is the mind's swelling on the strength of wealth, learning, or lineage; conceit is claiming for yourself an excellence you do not actually have, sometimes reaching as far as imagining yourself worthy of worship. Anger, the tradition says, is a disturbance of the inner instrument that drives a person to harm both others and themselves. Harshness is illustrated rather than merely defined: calling a one-eyed man fine-eyed, a misshapen man well-formed, a low-born man high-born. The words sound like praise; the intent behind them cuts. It is this mismatch, not simple loudness, that marks speech as harsh. Ignorance closes the list as the loss of viveka, the discriminating judgment that tells apart what should and should not be done. More than one reading of this verse treats it as a mirror rather than a portrait of strangers: the demonic list is read as the deliberate dark counterpart to the divine list just finished, point answering point, so that the two are meant to be held up side by side, not read as separate compositions describing separate kinds of people. Not every classical voice has left a comment on this particular verse. Where a source is genuinely silent or only speaks to the wider passage rather than to this line, that gap is worth stating honestly rather than covering over with invented confidence. What such a gap cannot honestly yield is a fresh, fully-voiced reading dressed up as the master's own word.
The doubt that rises
If these six traits mark one 'born' to the demonic endowment, is that birth a sealed verdict, or a tendency that can still be seen, named, and set down? And if a classical source has left little or nothing on a given verse, what is owed to the reader: silence, invention, or something honestly in between?
Where the paths divide
Read as a precise glossary, grounded in the metaphysics of rajas and tamas.
Shankara moves through the six terms as definitions, precise and unadorned, closing simply by noting that the fruit of both endowments comes next. Madhusudana widens the frame: the demonic wealth, he says, is made of rajas and tamas, and its bad marks are already present when the body itself is formed, so that in such a person only the faults arise, never fearlessness and its companions. Read this way, the verse states a starting condition, not a closing one.
Read as every fault tracing back to one root.
Ramanuja defines each trait through its bearing on others: pretence is duty performed for reputation, arrogance a pleasure that corrodes judgment, anger and harshness measured by the pain they cause. But his real claim is deeper than any single definition. The demonic nature, he says, is at root the nature that breaks the command of the Blessed One; every vice named here is one more shape that single refusal takes.
Read honestly, as a gap in the record rather than a filled-in reading.
The record shows Madhva offers no comment on this verse, and his sub-commentator Jayatirtha is silent too. It would be easy to extend his doctrine of the self's total dependence on the Lord onto this list, reading the traits as marks of a nature oriented from without beginning away from reliance on Hari. That extension is offered here, but clearly as extrapolation from his wider system, never as his own word on 16.4.
Read through a frame genuinely his, applied here as extrapolation.
Abhinavagupta's real comment sits at verse 16.1, where he treats this whole unit as one passage: tamasic ignorance lodged in the demonic portion, dispelled only by the knowledge that takes hold of the divine portion. No gloss of this verse's own six terms survives from him. Extending that frame, one might read pretence, arrogance, and the rest as symptoms of consciousness contracting away from its own freedom into a defensive, bounded self, but this is a construction built on his frame, not his stated word on 16.4.
Read as the false self's own chosen posture.
Sridhara reads the six as the deliberate mirror image of the twenty-six divine qualities, counterpart for counterpart, and widens the demonic to include the rakshasa nature as one kind with it. His sharpest claim is that this list names something more than a set of vices: a stance, the false self's own self-presentation, an 'I am God and yet not God' posture that the verses ahead will unfold further.
Read through a single scriptural image, taken as a hinge.
Madhusudana's citation of the Shatapatha account gives a single, durable image for a contemporary seeker: the demons, competing with the gods, thought only of feeding themselves first, offered into their own mouths, and so were defeated. Self-regard, on this reading, is not one fault among six but the door of defeat itself, the hinge the other five traits turn on.
All six readings agree on what the traits are and largely on what each means. They do not agree on how deep the root runs, whether it is a fixed nature sealed at birth or a stance still open to being seen and dropped, and this page does not resolve that either. It also leaves visibly open what the tradition itself leaves open: where a source has left little or nothing behind, the honest reading is to say so, not to quietly fill the silence.
A question to carry
Of the six traits named here, which one, if you are honest, has found the smallest foothold in you today, and what would it take simply to notice it before it spreads any further?
Where this teaching travels
Verses that sit near this one, each going its own way; follow whichever calls you.
So hold this list for a moment as a mirror rather than a portrait of someone else, let it show you plainly what it shows, and set down what does not serve you.
Each school is voiced from the commentators named above. Their full words, every translation, and where the schools agree and differ wait in the reading desk just below. Open the commentary desk.
Krishna has just finished the long roll of divine qualities; here, in one compact verse, he states their opposite, the demonic endowment, before naming the fruit of each in the verse that follows.
Where they agreethe convergence
Across schools and centuries the commentators come to the same ground. These are the points they share, and the voices that hold each one.
Pretence is dharma performed for an audience, a banner flown rather than a truth lived.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
The verse lists six gross traits of the demonic endowment set deliberately against the long roll of divine qualities just finished: pretence, arrogance, conceit, anger, harshness, and ignorance. Where the divine list ran to twenty-six items, this one is short and blunt, naming only what must be abandoned.
Harshness is measured by the mismatch between flattering words and cutting intent, not by loudness.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
Pretence (dambha) is read across the sources as the same core act: carrying or flying a banner of dharma you do not actually possess, righteousness performed for an audience rather than lived for its own sake.
Arrogance and conceit swell from different sources, wealth and learning against a claimed excellence one does not have.
Across AdvaitaŚaṅkara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara and Madhusūdana’s words
Harshness (parushya) is illustrated the same way by more than one source: calling a one-eyed man fine-eyed, a misshapen man well-formed, a low-born man high-born. The mismatch between kind words and cutting intent is what makes speech harsh, even when the words themselves sound complimentary.
The list mirrors, point for point, the divine qualities just given, a deliberate dark counterpart to the bright list before it.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Rāmānuja · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and 2 others’ words
Arrogance and conceit are consistently distinguished as swelling from different sources, arrogance from wealth, learning, or lineage, conceit from claiming for oneself an excellence one does not actually have, sometimes to the point of imagining oneself worthy of worship.
Not every acarya has left a word on this verse; where the record is thin, that gap is stated rather than papered over.
Across Advaita, BhaktiŚaṅkara · Śrīdhara · MadhusūdanaIn Śaṅkara, Śrīdhara, and 1 others’ words
Ignorance (ajnana) closes the list as the loss of viveka, discriminating judgment about what should and should not be done, and more than one source reads this list as a mirror set against the divine qualities, the demonic diptych's dark counterpart to the bright one.
This is the shared ground; it can be carried as it is. Below is where they differ.
Where they differthe divergence
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words
Ramanuja defines each trait with a bend toward relationship: pretence is duty performed for reputation, arrogance is pleasure that erodes judgment, anger and harshness are measured by the pain they cause others. His distinctive move is to trace every listed fault back to one root: the demonic nature is, at bottom, the nature that breaks the command of the Blessed One, so every vice here is ultimately a form of that one transgression.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
Sridhara reads the six as the deliberate mirror image of the twenty-six divine qualities, a structured counterpart rather than a loose list, and widens 'demonic' to include the rakshasa nature as one kind with it. His most distinctive claim is that this list names not mere vice but a stance, the false self's own self-presentation, an 'I am God and yet not God' posture the following verses will unfold further.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
The published record shows Madhva offers no comment on this verse, and none survives in Jayatirtha's sub-commentary either. On a conditional extension of his general doctrine of paratantra, dependence, one might read these traits as the visible signature of a soul-nature oriented away from reliance on Hari, but this is a labeled extrapolation from his wider system, not anything he wrote at 16.4 itself.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
Read for a contemporary seeker, Madhusudana's citation of the Shatapatha account, where the demons, absorbed in feeding themselves first, fed their own mouths and so lost, becomes a durable image: self-regard is named the door of defeat itself, not merely one fault among six but the hinge on which the others turn.
A few questions to carry
These ask for understanding, not recall; each answer is settled by the commentary itself.
For a second sitting
Carry this with youwhat stays
Take the six not as a checklist of other people's failings but as a mirror. Sit for a moment and ask, honestly, where pretence, arrogance, or harshness has found the smallest foothold in your own speech or bearing today, and simply notice it, without argument, before it can spread.
So take this list as a mirror held up for a moment, not a portrait of someone else, and let whatever you find in it be seen plainly enough to set down.
Read deeper
Everything a full study holds, folded below.
Word by word
All the commentary, woven together
The commentary, woven together
machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
he verse lists six gross traits of the demonic endowment set deliberately against the long roll of divine qualities just finished: pretence, arrogance, conceit, anger, harshness, and ignorance. Where the divine list ran to twenty-six items, this one is short and blunt, naming only what must be abandoned.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Pretence (dambha) is read across the sources as the same core act: carrying or flying a banner of dharma you do not actually possess, righteousness performed for an audience rather than lived for its own sake.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Harshness (parushya) is illustrated the same way by more than one source: calling a one-eyed man fine-eyed, a misshapen man well-formed, a low-born man high-born. The mismatch between kind words and cutting intent is what makes speech harsh, even when the words themselves sound complimentary.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Arrogance and conceit are consistently distinguished as swelling from different sources, arrogance from wealth, learning, or lineage, conceit from claiming for oneself an excellence one does not actually have, sometimes to the point of imagining oneself worthy of worship.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Ignorance (ajnana) closes the list as the loss of viveka, discriminating judgment about what should and should not be done, and more than one source reads this list as a mirror set against the divine qualities, the demonic diptych's dark counterpart to the bright one.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Shankara treats the verse as a compact glossary, defining each term precisely and noting only that the fruit of the two endowments follows next. Madhusudana goes further, framing the whole verse structurally as the deliberate counterpart to the divine endowment just given, and grounding the demonic birth in the metaphysics of rajas and tamas: these bad marks, he says, are brought out by sinful actions already present when the body was formed, so that only the faults arise in such a person and not fearlessness and the rest.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Ramanuja defines each trait with a bend toward relationship: pretence is duty performed for reputation, arrogance is pleasure that erodes judgment, anger and harshness are measured by the pain they cause others. His distinctive move is to trace every listed fault back to one root: the demonic nature is, at bottom, the nature that breaks the command of the Blessed One, so every vice here is ultimately a form of that one transgression.
Rāmānujācārya
Dvaita
The published record shows Madhva offers no comment on this verse, and none survives in Jayatirtha's sub-commentary either. On a conditional extension of his general doctrine of paratantra, dependence, one might read these traits as the visible signature of a soul-nature oriented away from reliance on Hari, but this is a labeled extrapolation from his wider system, not anything he wrote at 16.4 itself.
Madhvācārya
Kashmir Śaiva
Abhinavagupta's surviving comment treats 16.1 through 16.5 as one unit, with his substantive statement placed at 16.1: tamasic ignorance sits in the demonic portion, dispelled only by knowledge that takes hold of the divine portion. No line-by-line gloss of this verse's six terms survives in his own words. On a Kashmir Shaiva extension of that frame, one might read the six traits as symptoms of a single contraction of consciousness's own freedom into a defensive, bounded self, but this is explicitly an extension, not his stated word on 16.4.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
Sridhara reads the six as the deliberate mirror image of the twenty-six divine qualities, a structured counterpart rather than a loose list, and widens 'demonic' to include the rakshasa nature as one kind with it. His most distinctive claim is that this list names not mere vice but a stance, the false self's own self-presentation, an 'I am God and yet not God' posture the following verses will unfold further.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Modern
Read for a contemporary seeker, Madhusudana's citation of the Shatapatha account, where the demons, absorbed in feeding themselves first, fed their own mouths and so lost, becomes a durable image: self-regard is named the door of defeat itself, not merely one fault among six but the hinge on which the others turn.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
A Seeker Asks
If these traits belong to someone 'born' to the demonic endowment, am I simply fated toward one or the other, or is this something I can actually see and change in myself?
Several sources read the birth language as pointing to a settled tendency made manifest at a particular starting point, not a permanent verdict. The tendency surfaces; it is not said to be unalterable once seen.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Sridhara's framing helps here: these traits are less a fixed identity than a stance the false self adopts, a self-presentation. A stance, unlike a birth-mark, is something that can in principle be dropped once it is recognized for what it is.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
The list is given, across all these readings, immediately after the long list of divine qualities to take up, which only makes sense as practical instruction if both lists describe live possibilities within one person, not two separate species of being.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya
Contemplation
Take the six not as a checklist of other people's failings but as a mirror. Sit for a moment and ask, honestly, where pretence, arrogance, or harshness has found the smallest foothold in your own speech or bearing today, and simply notice it, without argument, before it can spread.
Sit with this · sonnet-5-authored
All the translations and commentary
Pull up a chair.
You have come to sit with this verse. When you are ready to hear the translators and the commentators in full, open a tradition in the doorways below, or add a voice by name above.
Also hear this verse, tradition by tradition.