Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 1, Verse 32: Arjuna to Krishna — Arjuna-Viṣāda-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  na kāṅkṣe vijayaṃ kṛṣṇa na ca rājyaṃ sukhāni ca | kiṃ no rājyena govinda kiṃ bhogair jīvitena vā — Arjuna addresses Kṛṣṇa directly: victory, kingship, and pleasures (sukhāni) are indeed attainable through the slaughter of those arrayed before him — prāptānāṃ yuyutsūnāṃ hiṃsayā vijayo rājyaṃ sukhāni ca labdhuṃ śakyānīti — yet he na kāṅkṣe, does not desire them. The objection then arises: kingship and the rest (rājyādi) are universally desired (sarvākāṅkṣitatvāt), for by them one might secure the well-being of sons, brothers, and the rest — putrabhratrādīnāṃ svāsthyam ādhātuṃ śakyam — and so why the withdrawal from battle? Arjuna preempts this with kiṃ no rājyena, pressing the ākṣepa (rejection) of rājyādi further: what use is sovereignty, what use are bhogāḥ, what use is life (jīvita) itself? The hetu (reason) for this wholesale rejection of rājyādi is announced as following — yeṣām iti — in the verse that immediately succeeds. Within the Advaita reading, Arjuna's na kāṅkṣe registers the surface form of vairāgya (dispassion), yet it arises here from śoka (grief) rather than viveka (discriminative discernment), and so Śaṅkara, commencing his bhāṣya only at 2.10, treats this entire chapter as the display of ajñāna (nescience) that makes Kṛṣṇa's teaching necessary.

  divergence: Śaṅkara left no direct commentary on 1.32; the B-bucket anchoring draws on Ānandagiri's ṭīkā, which supplies the dialectical structure: the prima facie case that vijayo rājyaṃ sukhāni ca labdhuṃ śakyāni by fighting, the counter that rājyādi is sarvākāṅkṣita since it can secure putrabhratrādīnāṃ svāsthyam, and Arjuna's preemptive ākṣepa of all these through kiṃ no rājyena. The Advaita doctrinal gloss on vairāgya and śoka is added from the school's siddhānta as applied context.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Rāmānuja reads verse 1.32 inside a larger description of Pārtha as mahāmanāḥ (great-souled), paramakāruṇika (supremely compassionate), and dīrghabandhu (one of deep familial loyalty) — a man who had already been deceived repeatedly by the Kauravas in the lākṣāgṛha (house of lac) affair and yet bore no malice. Now, beholding kin about to be slain, his body drenched in sweat (atimātra-svinna-sarvagātra) from the combined force of bandhu-sneha (kinship-love) and karuṇā (compassion) and dharma-adharma-bhaya (fear of wrongdoing), he surrenders bow and arrows and sinks onto the chariot-floor. For Rāmānuja, this renunciation of vijaya, rājya, and sukha is not yet mature kainkarya (loving service to Bhagavān) — it is the painful dissolution of ego-investment in outcomes that, if redirected toward Bhagavān's feet, becomes the seed of bhakti-yoga.

• Madhvadvaita

  Reconstructed from the dvaita school's doctrine, not translated from Madhva's commentary at this verse.

  Na kāṅkṣe vijayaṃ kṛṣṇa na ca rājyaṃ sukhāni ca — Arjuna renounces victory, kingship, and pleasure in a single breath. From the Dvaita reading, this utterance lays bare the condition of the paratantra (eternally dependent) jīva when volition collapses inward on itself: desire aimed at personal gain is precisely the disorder that marks the jīva‘s forgetting of its constitutional subordination to svatantra Hari. Kiṃ no rājyena govinda kiṃ bhogair jīvitena vā — the rhetorical questions addressed to Govinda are telling; Arjuna instinctively turns toward the Lord even in grief, which registers the jīva‘s irreducible bheda (real distinction) from and orientation toward Hari. Yet the renunciation here is not yet bhakti as ontological subordination — it is śoka-born vairāgya (dispassion born of sorrow), a negation of self-directed desire without the corresponding affirmation of action re-anchored in Hari's will. The pañca-bheda (the five-fold real distinction: Lord–jīva, Lord–matter, jīva–jīva, jīva–matter, matter–matter) remains unrecognized by Arjuna at this stage; he sees only the jīva-jīva relations — kinsmen he will kill — and not the svatantra Hari who orders all action. Dāsya (servanthood) to Hari, not the cessation of karma, is the corrective the verse anticipates.

  divergence: No Madhva or Jayatīrtha bhāṣya was available for this verse; the reading is voiced directly from Dvaita siddhānta applied to the mūla.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Reconstructed from the śuddhādvaita school's doctrine, not translated from Vallabha's commentary at this verse.

  Na kāṅkṣe vijayaṃ kṛṣṇa na ca rājyaṃ sukhāni ca — Arjuna declares he desires neither victory, nor kingdom, nor pleasures. Within puṣṭi-mārga (the path of divine grace), desire for rājya belongs to the sphere of sādhāraṇa-dharma, the ordinary course of worldly striving; Kṛṣṇa's own sevā (loving service) renders every such object without weight. The address Govinda — he who gladdens cows, earth, and senses — at the very moment Arjuna disclaims all enjoyment (bhoga) and life (jīvita) discloses the paradox puṣṭi-mārga holds at its center: the senses and their objects belong to Kṛṣṇa alone, are sustained by his anugraha (grace), and when a jīva (individual self) moves to renounce them out of grief rather than brahma-sambandha (the consecrating bond with Brahman), the renunciation is incomplete. Arjuna's kiṃ no rājyena govinda — ‘what is kingdom to us, Govinda?’ — is not yet the sevā in which kingdom and self alike are surrendered into Kṛṣṇa's own real manifestation of the world. The world is no illusion to be cast aside; it is Kṛṣṇa's svakīya (his own), and sorrow-driven disavowal does not become puṣṭi. Grace has not yet descended; Arjuna stands at the threshold where bhoga is refused but prasāda (Kṛṣṇa's freely given grace) has not yet been received.

  divergence: Bucket re-assigned from B to C: Vallabha left this verse without commentary; the rendering is voiced directly from śuddhādvaita siddhānta off the mūla.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Śrīdhara's bhāṣya on 1.32 is tightly economical. He poses the opponent's question: ‘Do you not see the fruits — vijaya and the rest?’ — and has Arjuna reply with ‘na kāṅkṣa iti' (I do not desire). He then expands: ‘Those very persons for whose sake we desired rājya and the rest — those prāṇa-dhana-tyāgis (those who have renounced life and wealth) — have themselves taken their stand on the battlefield for the sake of this war. Therefore, what use have we for rājya and the like?’ The logic is a complete collapse of the instrumental chain: the beneficiaries of victory have become instruments of the war itself; the goal-structure is self-annihilating, and thus Arjuna's refusal is not emotion but reasoned futility.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Phala-kāṅkṣā (desire for fruit) is the cause of upāya-pravṛtti (engagement with means): phalaākaṅkṣā hyupāya-pravṛttau kāraṇam. Where that desire is absent, engagement in the means — war — is as senseless as a man without hunger being urged toward cooking: bhojanecchā-virahiṇa iva pākādau mam pravṛttir anupapannā. The objection that dṛṣṭa-prayojana (visible purpose) — vijayo rājyaṃ sukhāni ca — remains unimpeached even where adṛṣṭa fails is thus closed: Arjuna severs all three. The address govinda is not incidental. Madhusūdana glosses: go-śabda-vācyāny indriyāṇy adhiṣṭhānatayā nityaṃ prāptas tvam — the term go names the indriyas (senses), and Govinda is he who presides over them as their constant witness; invoking this name, Arjuna signals that Kṛṣṇa already perceives his aihi-ka-phala-virāga (dispassion toward this-worldly fruit) directly. A final counter-objection — that even a dispassionate man should strive for the sake of his own people — is also met: ye yeṣāṃ tu bandhūnām arthe tad apekṣitaṃ, te ete prāṇān prāṇāśāṃ dhanāni dhanāśāṃ ca tyaktvā yuddhe avasthitāḥ — those very kinsmen for whose benefit rājya might have been sought have already cast away prāṇāśā (hope of life) and dhanāśā (hope of wealth) by standing in battle. No self-interest and no other-regarding motive survives. The bhoga-term, earlier used as synonym for sukha, is here read as pointing to the material means and objects of pleasure, distinguished from sukha proper by the verse's independent mention of both.