Daivāsura Sampad (दैवासुरसम्पद्)
Daivāsura sampad names Chapter 16’s claim that beings are born into one of two inherited endowments — sampad meaning something closer to “wealth” or “birthright” than achieved virtue — divine (daivī) or demonic (āsurī). The divine catalogue runs three verses and closes by naming its subject as “one born with divine sampad” (BG 16.3); its demonic counterpart is compressed into a single six-item verse immediately after (BG 16.4). Krishna states the stakes without a third option: daivī sampad leads toward liberation, āsurī sampad toward bondage (BG 16.5).
An asymmetric catalogue, then a hinge out of it
The two lists aren’t balanced in space or in structure. The divine qualities (verses 1–3) read as a flat, coexisting set — roughly two dozen traits a person could plausibly hold all at once, with no inherent order. The demonic type gets one terse verse of six traits (BG 16.4), which the chapter then spends verses 6–20 unpacking at length: a self-generated, godless cosmology (BG 16.8), desire built to never reach completion (BG 16.10), an extended interior monologue of self-deifying egoism (BG 16.14), and finally the consequence — repeated casting into demonic wombs, birth after birth, with no exit visible in the mechanism itself (BG 16.19, BG 16.20). That bleak, cyclical description sits immediately before the chapter’s actual hinge: verse 21 names lust, anger, and greed as the “triple gate of hell” and reduces everything argued since verse 6 to one instruction — renounce these three (BG 16.21). The cosmological framing is elaborate and, on its own terms, fairly hopeless; the practical takeaway is three named, independently closable gates, not a mystery that requires the whole apparatus above it to be understood first.
Related
- Dharma (धर्म) — the demonic type is partly defined by understanding “neither pravṛtti nor nivṛtti” (BG 16.7), the two recognized paths of a dharmic life, and the chapter closes by making scripture the explicit authority for determining right action — the same question dharma answers case-by-case in Chapter 2, here answered by textual authority instead
- Guṇatraya (गुणत्रय) — Chapter 14’s three guṇas mix and shift within a single person; Chapter 16 sorts the same underlying material into exactly two fixed camps instead of three fluid ones, trading a psychology of shifting tendencies for something closer to moral typology
Verses that reference this
Empty of hope, empty of deeds, empty of wisdom, senseless, partaking of the deceitful, brutal and demoniacal nature.
Fearlessness, cleanness of life, steadfastness in the Yoga of wisdom, almsgiving, self-restraint and sacrifice and study of the Scriptures, austerity and straightforwardness,
Harmlessness, truth, absence of wrath, renunciation, peacefulness, absence of crookedness, compassion to living beings, uncovetousness, mildness, modesty, absence of fickleness,
Vigour, forgiveness, fortitude, purity, absence of envy and pride—these are his who is born with the divine properties, O Bhârata.
Hypocrisy, arrogance and conceit, wrath and also harshness and unwisdom are his who is born, O Pârtha, with demoniacal properties.
The divine properties are deemed to be for liberation, the demoniacal for bondage. Grieve not, thou art born with divine properties, O Pândava.
Twofold is the animal creation in this world, the divine and the demoniacal: the divine hath been described at length: hear from Me, O Pârtha, the demoniacal.
Demoniacal men know neither right energy nor right abstinence; nor purity, nor even propriety, nor truth is in them.
"The universe is without truth, without basis," they say, "without a God; brought about by mutual union, and caused by lust and nothing else."
Holding this view, these ruined selves of small understanding, of fierce deeds, come forth as enemies for the destruction of the world.
Surrendering themselves to insatiable desires, possessed with vanity, conceit and arrogance, holding evil ideas through delusion, they engage in action with impure resolves.
Giving themselves over to unmeasured thought whose end is death, regarding the gratification of desires as the highest, feeling sure that this is all,
Held in bondage by a hundred ties of expectation, given over to lust and anger, they strive to obtain by unlawful means hoards of wealth for sensual enjoyments.
"This to-day by me hath been won, that purpose I shall gain; this wealth is mine already, and also this shall be mine in future.
"I have slain this enemy, and others also I shall slay. I am the Lord, I am the enjoyer, I am perfect, powerful, happy;
"I am wealthy, well-born; what other is there that is like unto me? I will sacrifice, I will give alms, I will rejoice." Thus deluded by unwisdom,
Bewildered by numerous thoughts, enmeshed in the web of delusion, addicted to the gratification of desire, they fall downwards into a foul hell.
Self-glorifying, stubborn, filled with the pride and intoxication of wealth, they perform lip-sacrifices for ostentation, contrary to scriptural ordinance.
Given over to egoism, power, insolence, lust and wrath, these malicious ones hate Me in the bodies of others and in their own.
These haters, evil, pitiless, vilest among men in the world, I ever throw down into demoniacal wombs.
Cast into demoniacal wombs, deluded birth after birth, attaining not to Me, O Kaunteya, they sink into the lowest depths.
Triple is the gate of this hell, destructive of the self—lust, wrath, and greed; therefore let man renounce these three.
A man liberated from these three gates of darkness, O son of Kunti, accomplisheth his own welfare, and thus reacheth the highest goal.
The men who perform severe austerities, unenjoined by the Scriptures, wedded to vanity and egoism, impelled by the force of their desires and passions,
Unintelligent, tormenting the aggregated elements forming the body, and Me also, seated in the inner body, know these demoniacal in their resolves.