Taking refuge in insatiable desire, endowed with hypocrisy, pride and arrogance, through delusion clinging to false conceptions, they act with impure vows.

The motor of the asura: kāma — desire, lust, insatiable (duṣpūra — difficult to fill). The companions: dambha (hypocrisy), māna (pride), mada (arrogance, intoxication of ego).

Mohāt — through delusion, they gṛhītvā — cling to asat-grāha — false conceptions (asat = non-real). They act (pravartante) with aśuci-vrataḥ — impure vows/vocations. Their “religiosity” is empty ritual or destructive ideology, without purity of intention.