Chapter sixteen divides human endowment in two and then lists both. The divine inheritance runs to twenty-six items and takes only three verses: fearlessness, purity of being, steadiness in knowledge and discipline, giving, restraint, sacrifice, study of scripture, austerity, uprightness, non-injury, truth, absence of anger, relinquishment, tranquillity, absence of slander, compassion toward beings, absence of greed, gentleness, modesty, absence of fickleness, vigour, patience, fortitude, purity, absence of malice and absence of excessive pride.
The list rewards reading slowly, because of what is in it and what is not. There is no belief on it. There is no ritual observance beyond the general terms of sacrifice and study. Two thirds of the items are about how a person behaves toward others, and several of the most emphasised, absence of slander, absence of malice, gentleness, modesty, describe restraint in ordinary social conduct rather than any spiritual attainment.
The opposing endowment is given in one verse, and it is a list of dispositions rather than of acts: ostentation, arrogance, excessive pride, anger, harshness and ignorance. The chapter says the first leads toward release and the second toward bondage, and then reassures Arjuna that he is born to the divine inheritance, which is the only note of personal consolation in the chapter.
What follows is far longer than either list, because the chapter is much more interested in describing the second kind of person from the inside than in cataloguing them. That description is the subject of the chapter's better half.