Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 1, Verse 47: Arjuna to Krishna — Arjuna-Viṣāda-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  *Śoka-saṃvigna-mānasaḥ* — the mind convulsed by grief: this is the condition named at the close of the first chapter. Arjuna, *evam uktvā*, having spoken thus, *visṛjya saśaraṃ cāpam*, casts down the arrow-laden bow and sinks (*upāviśat*) onto the chariot floor. On the Advaita reading, the convulsion (*saṃvega*) is the presenting symptom of *adhyāsa* (superimposition) — the beginningless habit of taking the body-mind complex for the *ātman* (the self) and taking kinsmen for genuinely distinct others. Because *ātman* is one and undivided, the very category of 'loss of loved ones' is built on *avidyā* (nescience); grief of this kind has no footing in the real. The dropped bow externalizes what has already collapsed inwardly: the *manas* (mind), unsteady in *viveka* (discrimination between the real and the apparent), has surrendered to *moha* (delusion). This *viṣāda* (despondency) is not a spiritual opening in itself but the knot that the teaching must cut. The verse thus marks the precise threshold where *saṃsāra*'s bondage — sustained by *ahaṃkāra* (false ego-sense) and *mamakāra* (the sense of 'mine') — stands naked, and where the enquiry into *brahman*, the sole non-dual reality, becomes urgent.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Rāmānuja's bhāṣya dwells on Arjuna as mahāmanāḥ (great-souled) and paramakāruṇika (supremely compassionate): he is no coward but a being of deep dharmic sensitivity who has been repeatedly deceived and threatened by the Kauravas and yet — sustained by the Paramapuruṣa (Kṛṣṇa) beside him — is undone not by fear but by bandhusneha (love of kin) and dharmādharmabhaya (dread of transgressing dharma). Sweat pours from every limb (atiṃātra-svinna-sarva-gātra), and he lays down the bow-with-arrows and sinks into the chariot-seat — the collapse is the collapse of a paramadhārmika overwhelmed by compassion, not of a soul rejecting the Lord's service. Rāmānuja thus frames viṣāda as the proper entry-point for śaraṇāgati (surrender): the self that has exhausted its own resources is precisely the self ready to receive the Bhagavān's teaching.

• Madhvadvaita

  Madhva does not gloss this verse, but his doctrinal architecture illuminates it: the jīva (Arjuna) is eternally distinct from and dependent on Hari, and every act — including collapse — is within Hari's sovereign will. The viṣāda here is sāttvika-permitted suffering, the jīva reduced to the zero-point that makes the divine instruction of chapter 2 onward necessary. That Kṛṣṇa is already present in the chariot is the Dvaita key: the Lord does not intervene from outside; he has been alongside the dependent jīva throughout, waiting for the moment of total surrender.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha's bhāṣya reads Arjuna as mahākaruṇa (greatly compassionate) and komalamanā (tender-hearted), a Vāsudeva-sahāya (one whose companion is Vāsudeva himself), who nevertheless sees those about to be slain and is overwhelmed: mohaśokāviṣṭa (seized by delusion-and-grief), sweat breaking across his limbs, he casts away (utsṛjya) the bow-with-arrows and sits in the chariot-seat — sarvatoduhkhena nirviṇṇa, 'utterly disheartened on every side.' Vallabha's gloss ārtatvam tasyasūcitam ('his condition of ārta — affliction — is here signalled') frames the collapse as the puṣṭi-mārga threshold: it is precisely the jīva's total helplessness (ārtatva) that opens it to Kṛṣṇa's unconditional grace (anugraha), for in Puṣṭi-mārga the Lord's prasāda flows to the afflicted who cannot help themselves.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Śrīdhara's bhāṣya text is not available in this payload; the following is inferred from his school-stance alone. The verse is the seal of viṣāda-yoga: Saṃjaya reports that Arjuna, having spoken (evam uktvā), has settled into the chariot-seat (rathopastha upāviśat), releasing the bow together with its arrows (visṛjya saśaraṃ cāpaṃ), his mind agitated by grief (śoka-saṃvigna-mānasaḥ). In Śrīdhara's devotional reading the act of letting go the bow (cāpa) anticipates the act of letting go the ego: viṣāda is the prerequisite for upadeśa, sorrow the soil in which Kṛṣṇa's word takes root.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusūdana's bhāṣya text is not available in this payload; the following is inferred from his synthetic stance alone. Madhusūdana, who holds Advaita metaphysics and Kṛṣṇa-bhakti together, would read the collapsing Arjuna as a figure doubly significant: at the jñāna level, śoka-saṃvigna-mānasaḥ ('a mind convulsed by grief') names the tamas-rajas storm that obscures ātma-jñāna; at the bhakti level, the same collapse is the bhakta's falling at the feet of the Beloved — the dropped bow (visṛjya saśaraṃ cāpaṃ) is a voluntary disarmament before Kṛṣṇa, the supreme object of surrender. The two readings do not contradict: in his Bhaktirasāyana, Madhusūdana argues that Kṛṣṇa-bhakti is itself the highest jñāna, so the moment of viṣāda is simultaneously the nadir of avidyā and the dawn of śaraṇāgati.