Sanskrit
अधश्चोर्ध्वं प्रसृतास्तस्य शाखाः गुणप्रवृद्धा विषयप्रवालाः । अधश्च मूलान्यनुसन्ततानि कर्मानुबन्धीनि मनुष्यलोके ॥
adhaś cordhvaṃ prasṛtās tasya śākhāḥ guṇapravṛddhā viṣayapravālāḥ adhaś ca mūlāny anusantatāni karmānubandhīni manuṣyaloke
Translation
Downwards and upwards spread the branches of it, nourished by the qualities; the objects of the senses its buds; and its roots grow downwards, the bonds of action in the world of men.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
This verse thickens the tree image before it gets felled: branches run both up and down, nourished by the gunas — the three qualities of nature from chapter 14’s taxonomy — and tipped with sense-objects as their new shoots, while the roots reach downward into the human world as karmānubandhīni, “action-bound.” That compound is the verse’s real payload: it names the roots as karma itself, the accumulated momentum of action that keeps regrowing the whole structure. Coming right after chapter 14, this reads as a synthesis move — gunas explain what feeds the tree, karma explains what anchors it, and together they explain why the tree, though “avyayam” in verse 1, still needs cutting rather than merely observing.
Concepts