Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 1, Verse 34: Arjuna to Krishna — Arjuna-Viṣāda-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Śaṅkarācārya left no bhāṣya on this verse; his commentary begins at 2.10. What the verse establishes, however, is the raw enumeration of the kinship-web — ācāryāḥ (teachers), pitaraḥ (fathers), putrāḥ (sons), pitāmahāḥ (grandfathers), mātulaḥ (maternal uncles), śvaśurāḥ (fathers-in-law), pautrāḥ (grandsons), śyālāḥ (brothers-in-law), sambandhinaḥ (affinal kin) — whose anticipated slaughter Arjuna names as the ground of his refusal. From an Advaita standpoint this catalogue is significant precisely because it enumerates the multiplicity of nāmarūpa (name-and-form) that saṃsāra mistakes for real bonds; the grief that follows is the śoka born of avidyā (ignorance) that Kṛṣṇa will diagnose beginning 2.11.

  divergence: ABSENT — Śaṅkarācārya's commentary begins at BG 2.10; rendering is inferred from his 2.11 framing of śoka as rooted in avidyā.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Rāmānuja's bhāṣya frames Arjuna here not as a coward but as mahāmanāḥ (great-souled), paramakāruṇikaḥ (supremely compassionate), and dīrghabandhuḥ (one who extends protection over long stretches of kinship-time). The enumeration of relatives — ācāryāḥ, pitaraḥ, putrāḥ and the rest — is evidence of this expansive karuṇā (compassion), not mere sentimentality. Rāmānuja notes that Arjuna had already been repeatedly deceived and endangered (jatugṛha-ādi, the house-of-lac plot and its like) by these very kinsmen, yet the sight of them arrayed for slaughter reawakens bandhu-sneha (kinship-love) and a fear that both dharma and adharma apply, causing his limbs to drip with sweat — a physiological signal that moral reasoning has become inseparable from relational compassion.

  divergence: Rāmānuja: 'mahāmanāḥ paramakāruṇiko dīrghabandhuḥ paramadharmikaḥ... bhandhusnehena paramayā ca kṛpayā dharmādharma-bhayena ca atimātra-svinna-sarva-gātraḥ'

• Madhvadvaita

  Madhvācārya left no bhāṣya text on this verse in the supplied payload. The Dvaita reading of this catalogue of kinsmen would insist that each individual listed — ācārya, pita, putra — is a distinct, irreducible jīva (individual soul), eternally separate from Hari; Arjuna's confusion is not the confusion of non-difference (as Advaita would say) but the confusion of a jīva who has misplaced his primary loyalty, directing toward finite relatives the dependence that belongs only to Hari.

  divergence: ABSENT — no Madhvācārya bhāṣya supplied for 1.34; rendering is inferred from Madhva's Dvaita metaphysics as applied to the kinship catalogue.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  The *ācāryāḥ* (teachers), *pitaraḥ* (fathers), *putrāḥ* (sons), *pitāmahāḥ* (grandfathers), *mātulāḥ* (maternal uncles), *śvaśurāḥ* (fathers-in-law), *pautrāḥ* (grandsons), *śyālāḥ* (brothers-in-law), and *sambandhinaḥ* (kinsmen by marriage) — every figure Arjuna enumerates is a real manifestation of Kṛṣṇa's own *śakti* (power), none illusory, none reducible to a projection of *māyā*. In *śuddhādvaita*, the world is Brahman's own real self-expression; these kinsmen are thus not appearances concealing an indifferent absolute but genuine forms in *Kṛṣṇa-līlā* (the Lord's divine play), each present on the field by the dispensation of *puṣṭi* (divine grace). Arjuna sees *tathaiva ca* — 'and likewise' — an accumulation of beloved faces, and his grief is real, not merely a cognitive error. Yet the grief arises because he holds these forms as *svatantra* (independently real, self-sufficient) goods separable from Kṛṣṇa, rather than seeing them as sustained entirely within Kṛṣṇa's sovereignty. The *puṣṭi-mārga* (path of grace) does not dissolve the enumerated relations — it reseats every *sambandha* (relation) within *brahma-sambandha* (the bond with Brahman), so that *ācārya*, *pitāmaha*, and *śyāla* alike are held in and by the Lord who alone is the real *bandhu* (kinsman) of all.

  divergence: No bhāṣya by Vallabhācārya on this verse; the reading is voiced directly from *śuddhādvaita* siddhānta — real-world non-māyāvādin theology, *puṣṭi* as the ground of all relation, *brahma-sambandha* as the corrective to Arjuna's misplaced grief.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Śrīdhara Svāmī addresses a sharp pūrvapakṣa (prior objection) implicit in Arjuna's reluctance: if compassion prevents Arjuna from killing them, those very kinsmen enumerated in the verse — mātulaḥ, śvaśurāḥ, pautrāḥ and the rest — will, out of rājya-lobha (greed for the kingdom), kill him instead. Śrīdhara's resolution is blunt: Arjuna declares he would not wish to kill these relatives even for the sake of trailokya-rājya (sovereignty over the three worlds), let alone for mere mahī (earth alone). The scale of renunciation in the verse is thus made explicit by Śrīdhara — the enumeration of kin is not background colour but the precise object of a refusal that holds even against cosmic stakes.

  divergence: Śrīdhara: 'ghnatopi asmān ghāyatopi etān trailokya-rājyasyāpi hetoḥ tatprāptyarthamapi ahaṃ hantuṃ necchāmi... kiṃ punar mahīmātrapraptyarthamityarthaḥ'

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusūdana Sarasvatī begins by answering a natural question: why name these relatives at all, since the very purpose of kingship was said to be for their welfare? His answer is that they are now present here (atra) on the battlefield — the kinship-web has become the killing-field. He then mirrors Śrīdhara's pūrvapakṣa but amplifies it: Arjuna says he would not merely refrain from killing, he would not even form the icchā (the wish) to kill — 'icchāmapi na kuryāmaham' — even if they are slaying him (asmān ghnataḥ), even for trailokya-rājya (three-worlds sovereignty). Madhusūdana further notes that Arjuna's vocative 'Madhusūdana' is not incidental: it signals bhagavataḥ vaidika-mārga-pravartakatva (the Lord's function as initiator of the Vedic path), a reminder that the one being petitioned is himself the axis of dharma.

  divergence: Madhusūdana: 'yeṣāmartthe rājyādyapekṣitaṃ te atra nāgatā... icchāmapi na kuryāmahaṃ kiṃ punar hanyām... Madhusūdeneti sambodhayan vaidika-mārga-pravartakatvaṃ bhagavataḥ sūcayati'