Yat danam — what giving — adesha-kale — at wrong place and time. Apatrebhyah — to unfit recipients. Asat-kritam — without honor. Avajnatam — with contempt. Tat tamasam udahritam — that is declared tamasika.
Krishna names five tamasika markers. Place wrong, time wrong, recipient wrong, honor missing, contempt present. The dana's structural fit is broken at every register.
Shankara reads giving falling into triple defect: wrong place — adesha — an impure or mleccha-contaminated locale; wrong time — akala — a moment carrying no punya-potential, stripped of sankranti or festival mark; wrong recipient — apatra — the foolish or thieving. Even where place, time, recipient are adequate, if the gift is given without honor — asat-kritam: no welcoming hospitality — and with avajnatam — contempt — the dana falls into tamasika. The five-fold defect produces the tamasika dana.
Madhusudana harmonizes jnana-discrimination with devotional warmth: adesha is a place intrinsically sinful or polluted through durjana-samsarga — company of the wicked. Akala includes both a time of asaucha — ritual impurity — and any moment not renowned as a cause of punya. Unfit recipients are those bereft of vidya and tapas — actors, jesters — nata-vita. The verse names a thoroughgoing structural failure of the dana-act.
Ramanuja reads the triple deficiency — wrong place, time, recipient — as dismantling the gift's character as kainkarya to Bhagavan. Dana addressed to an unfit vessel in an inauspicious setting fails to reach the Lord who inhabits the worthy recipient. The further marks of asat-kritam — absence of reverential hospitality of pada-prakshalana and the like — and avajnatam together indicate that the giver does not see Bhagavan in the recipient. The bhakti-frame's diagnostic is precise.
Madhva reads on the bheda-frame: dana given at adesha-kale to apatras, dispensed without honor and with avajna, is tamasika. Within the pancha-bheda, the jiva's giving is ontologically indexed to taratamya — graded ontological hierarchy. Only dana directed correctly within that hierarchy reaches its proper recipient. Tamasika dana inverts the hierarchy at every register, and the gift falls outside the relational structure entirely.
Vallabha reads the verse against the shuddhadvaita backdrop where the world is no illusion but Krishna's own real self-expression. Every act of giving, properly oriented, belongs to pushti-marga. Tamasika dana — at wrong place, time, recipient, without honor, with contempt — has been severed from the lila entirely. The pushti-marga reading: where the relational orientation has collapsed, even the form of dana is structurally inert.
Shridhara specifies the tamasika gift with characteristic philological precision: adesha is a ritually impure place — ashuchi-sthana. Akala is a time of pollution or inauspiciousness — ashaucha-samaya. Apatras are the disreputable — vita-nata-nartaka — actors, jesters, dancers — who neither embody nor transmit dharmic value. Even when place, time, recipient are sound, giving asat-kritam and avajnatam still falls into tamasika. The chapter's full dana-spectrum is now mapped.