The doer who is unsteady, not collected; vulgar, of an utterly unrefined understanding, like a child; stubborn, who like a staff bends to no one; deceitful, a trickster who hides his powers; spiteful, bent on cutting others down; lazy, disinclined to act even in his duties; despondent, always sunk in low spirits; and a procrastinator, who draws out his tasks endlessly, of a forever sluggish nature, so that what should be done today or tomorrow he does not do even in a month; such a doer is called of tamas.

Unjoined, unfit for scriptural action, settled in cross-action; vulgar, of unattained learning; stubborn, of a nature that undertakes nothing; deceitful, with a relish for sorcery and the rest; spiteful, bent on cheating; lazy, of slow engagement even in the actions begun; despondent, of a nature exceedingly given to low spirits; a procrastinator, who, doing sorcery and the rest, is of a nature given to a long-drawn-out brooding of harm toward others; the doer who is of such a kind is tamasic. Thus the threefoldness, by quality, of the knowledge whose object is the action to be done, of the action to be done, and of the doer has been told. Now the Lord states the threefoldness, by quality, of understanding and of constancy, which have the form of the certainty of all truth and of all human goals.

This is a brief sub-gloss. For a fuller reading of this verse, see Madhusūdana, Śaṅkara, or Rāmānuja above.

He who points out a fault done by another, even one done long ago, when it is unfitting to do so, is the 'long-drawn-out one' (dirghasutri), as the lexicon has it, 'a fault done by another, even one done long ago, he who, out of fault, is its pointer-out, is called the long-drawn-out one'.