Krishna
काममाश्रित्य दुष्पूरं दम्भमानमदान्विताः । मोहाद्गृहीत्वासद्ग्राहान्प्रवर्तन्तेऽशुचिव्रताः ॥
kāmamāśritya duṣpūraṃ dambhamānamadānvitāḥ | mohādgṛhītvāsadgrāhānpravartante'śucivratāḥ ||
Clinging to desire that can never be filled, full of hypocrisy, pride and arrogance, they take up false convictions out of delusion and go about their work with impure vows.
Explanation Krishna is describing the demonic (āsura) temperament in this chapter. Here he says such people are driven by insatiable desire (kāma), hypocrisy (dambha), pride and conceit. Deluded, they adopt wrong ideas and live by impure resolves (aśuci-vratāḥ), meaning self-serving rules rather than disciplined, clean conduct.
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About the Bhagavad Gita
The Bhagavad Gita, in Sanskrit श्रीमद्भगवद्गीता (Śrīmad Bhagavad Gītā ), “the song of the Lord”, is a dialogue of 18 chapters and 700 verses from the Bhishma Parva of the Mahabharata. On the battlefield of Kurukshetra, as the war is about to begin, the warrior Arjuna loses heart at the thought of fighting his own kin, and his charioteer Krishna answers him: on duty, on acting without attachment to the results, on knowledge, meditation and devotion. Sanjaya recounts the conversation to the blind king Dhritarashtra. The name is also written Bhagwad Gita, Bhagvad Gita, Bhagavat Gita or Bhagavad Geeta; with the honorific, Shrimad Bhagavad Gita, Srimad Bhagavad Gita or Shrimad Bhagwat Geeta; and often simply the Gita or Geeta.
Every verse is here in the original Sanskrit, with a Roman (IAST) transliteration, a plain-language translation and a short explanation, in English, Hindi, Arabic, Spanish, French and Tamil. The translations were made from the Sanskrit for this site and reviewed; they follow no published translation. Reading is free, with no account or advertising, and your progress stays in your browser. The verses are numbered 1.1 to 18.78, 701 in all, counting the question that opens chapter 13.
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