[4] These three guṇas are called: sattva (goodness, calmness, harmonious), rajas (passion, activity, movement), and tamas (ignorance, inertia, laziness).
[6] In human behavior studies, Guna means personality, innate nature and psychological attributes of an individual.
In verse VI.36 of Nirukta by Yāska, a 1st millennium BC text on Sanskrit grammar and language that preceded Panini, Guṇa is declared to be derived from another root Gaṇa,[16] which means "to count, enumerate".
In other contexts, such as phonology, grammar and arts, "Guṇa-" takes the meaning of āmantraṇā (आमन्त्रणा, addressing, invitation) or abhyāsa (अभ्यास, habit, practice).
Ancient South Indian commentators, such as Lingayasurin, explain that the meaning of guṇa as "thread, string" comes from the root guṇa- in the sense of repetition (abhyāsa), while the Telugu commentator Mallinatha explains the root guṇa- is to be understood in Sisupalavadha as āmredana (आम्रेडन, reiteration, repetition).
[17] Larson and Bhattacharya suggest that the "thread" metaphor relates to that which connects and runs between what we objectively observe to the tattva (तत्त्व, elementary property, principle, invisible essence) of someone or something.
[11][18] In the context of philosophy, morality and understanding nature, "Guna-" with more dental na takes the meaning of addressing quality, substance, tendency and property.
Maitrayaniya Upanishad is one of the earliest texts making an explicit reference to Hindu trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva and linking them to their Guna – as creator/activity, preserver/purity, destroyer/recycler respectively.
[19] The idea of three types of guṇa, innate nature and forces that together transform and keep changing the world is, however, found in numerous earlier and later Indian texts.
[20] In Nyaya (Generality or common features) school of Hinduism, there is extensive debate on what Guna means, and whether quality is innate, subjective or describable.
[10] The most commonly accepted list is: color, taste, smell, touch, number, contact, disjunction, farness, nearness, dimension, separateness, knowledge, pleasure, frustration, desire, hatred, effort, weight, fluidity, viscosity, dispositional tendency, merit, demerit, and sound.
The others are: inherence (samavaya), being (bhava), genus (samanya), species (vishesha), substance (dravya) and motion/action (karman).
[26] Gangesha, a Nyaya scholar, suggests a somewhat different theory, stating that our awareness is of two types – true and false.
[28] Verse 17.2 refers to the three Guna – sattvic, rajasic and tamasic – as innate nature (psychology or personality of an individual).
Tamasic guṇa is one driven by what is impure, dark, destructive, aimed to hurt another, contemptuous, negative and vicious.
[32] Furthermore, in Chapter 2 of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna advises Arjuna to transcend the three modes of existence and other forms of dualism.
Hindu literature, such as the Bhagavad Gita, state it to be dynamic and changeable with knowledge, introspection and understanding of sva-dharma.
[6][43] When any of the guṇa is out of balance in a being or object, the Samkhya school suggests that a pattern of evolution starts, affecting not only itself but its environment.
[46] In the terminology of Ayurveda (traditional medicine), guṇa can refer to one of twenty fundamental properties which any substance can exhibit, arranged in ten pairs of antonyms, viz.