Hinduism.
In the Sankhya philosophy: one of the three dominating principles of nature (or gunas), manifested in material things as heaviness, darkness, rigidity, and in the individual as fear, sloth, stupidity, and indifference. Cf. GUNA n. 2.
[1859 J. R. BALLANTYNE Christianity contrasted with Hindu Philos. p. xxxv,Ignorance..is spoken of as ‘consisting of the three fetters’, the word for ‘quality’ (viz., guna) originally meaning ‘a fetter’... We have phenomena of pure cognition, of lively emotion, and, finally, of inertness... The three..are named respectively in Sanskrit, sattwa, rajas, and tamas.] 1860 Brit. & Foreign Evangelical Rev. 9 148 Dr Ballantyne..tells us distinctly that the three gunas, or qualities, are Sattwa, Rajas, and Tamas... Tamas [denotes] all such [qualities] as may be regarded as neither positive nor negative. 1895 E. ARNOLD Tenth Muse 62 All that is Sattwa, Rájas, Tamas; all Which influences, which predominates, Which operates in creatures, have for source The will of Kâla. 1922 Internat. Jrnl. Ethics 33 4 He..is in a true sense the citizen of the world. The quality of sattva..with its ideals of joy and love predominates over those of rajas with its craving for power and pride and tamas, with its dulness and inertia. 1934 Philos. Rev. 43 598 Everything that exists as real in the universe..is the product of these gu
a reals in different proportions; in some the sattwa element may predominate, in others, the rajas, in yet others, the tamas. 1995 J. E. ROHDE & H. VISWANATHAN Rural Private Practitioner i. 13 The mental-spiritual forces are called Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas denoting purity, energy, and passivity respectively. 2001 Hindu (Nexis) 8 Apr., [He] creates composite theatre, an audio-visual montage that acknowledges the downward pull of rajas (exploitative ambition) and tamas (escapist torpor) in individual and society.