BG 10.40 — Vibhūti-Yoga — Sūtrakṛt-Gītā

Bhagavad Gītā 10.40Chapter 10 · Vibhūti-Yoga · Krishna → Arjuna · Paranṭapa · anuṣṭubh

नान्तो ऽस्ति मम दिव्यानां विभूतीनां परन्तप ।

एष तूद्देशतः प्रोक्तो विभूतेर् विस्तरो मया ॥

nānto 'sti mama divyānāṃ vibhūtīnāṃ parantapa

eṣa tūddeśataḥ prokto vibhūter vistaro mayā

spokensingle-voice recital; rendered via IndicF5 conditioned on a Sanskrit reference clip

meaning

There is no end to my divine manifestations, scorcher of enemies. What I have declared here is a summary only, one region of a glory that no speech can fully compass.

Bhāṣyakāra purports

Śaṅkaraadvaita
There is no end to my divine manifestations (divyā vibhūtayaḥ), O scorcher of enemies — the Īśvara who is the self of all (sarvātman) cannot be bounded in enumeration by anyone. What has been declared here is a sampling (uddeśataḥ), a single region of an infinity that cannot be spoken or known. The catalogue is a gesture toward totality, not a boundary drawn around it.
divergence: Advaita reads the verse as epistemological humility about the infinite: even omniscient inquiry cannot reach an end, because the manifest is the One appearing as many without exhausting itself.
Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita
There is no terminus to my divine, auspicious (kalyāṇī) manifestations, O Arjuna — what has been spoken here is a compressed summary using certain characterizing attributes (uPādhayaḥ), not the fullness of Bhagavān's self-disclosure. The beloved devotee is invited to discover ever-wider vistas of glory; the list is an opening door, not a closed room.
divergence: Viśiṣṭādvaita emphasises the auspicious quality (kalyāṇatva) of every vibhūti — each is a mode of Bhagavān's infinite perfection, inviting continued bhakti-expansion rather than intellectual closure.
Madhvadvaita
Hari's divine glories are without boundary; the jīva (individual soul), forever ontologically distinct from the Lord, cannot exhaust description of what belongs solely to the sovereign Hari. The summary given is for the worshipper's practical orientation — it does not imply that the devotee's knowledge can ever equal the Lord's self-knowledge.
divergence: Dvaita uniquely stresses that the inexhaustibility of vibhūti is proof of Hari's absolute independence (svātantrya) — the jīva's epistemic limit here is not a shared limit but a mark of the eternally dependent nature of all non-Hari realities.
Vallabhaśuddhādvaita
Kṛṣṇa draws the section to a close (upasaṃhāra): these divine vibhūtis have been named by name only (nāmamātreṇa vastu-saṃkīrtanam) — the naming itself is the act of worship, not an exhaustive description. Even what has been named is infinite; the catalogue is a fragment of a fragment, offered as prasāda to kindle recognition.
divergence: Śuddhādvaita's characteristic move: the listing of vibhūtis is itself a form of kīrtana (sacred naming), expressing the Puṣṭi-mārga principle that even description of Kṛṣṇa participates in his līlā.
Śrīdharabhakti
Because vibhūti is endless (ananta), the vibhūtis cannot be declared in their totality (sākalyena vaktuṃ na śakyante) — what is given here is a compressed summary (saṃkṣepataḥ), offered so that the devotee gains enough of a foothold to begin worship. The limit is in speech, not in the Lord.
divergence: Śrīdhara's bhakti-philological register holds both ends simultaneously: the Lord's infinity is cause for wonder, and the partial disclosure is cause for gratitude — typical of the balanced, non-combative voice of the traditional bhakti commentator.
Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti
O parantapa — you who generate torment (tāpa) in outer enemies, the kāma-krodha-lobha-ādī (kāma, desire; krodha, anger; lobha, greed, and the rest — here named as the true adversaries — mama divyānāṃ vibhūtīnām antaḥ iyattā nāsti: my divine vibhūtis have no finite measure, no countable limit. Consequently, sarvajñenāpi sā śakyate jñātuṃ vaktuṃ vā — even by the omniscient one, those vibhūtis cannot be fully known or declared. The reason: sarvajñatā has san-mātra (pure Being alone) as its domain (san-mātra-viṣayatvāt sarvajñatāyāḥ), and what is infinite within Being exceeds even that scope. Eṣa tu tvāṃ praty uddeśataḥ ekadeśena prokto vibhūter vistāro mayā — what I have disclosed is directed specifically toward you (tvāṃ prati), set forth by way of indication (uddeśataḥ), one portion (ekadeśa) of the full expanse. The paramā prīti (highest love) of bhakti is not dissolved by this admission of inexhaustibility; rather, the personal address tvāṃ prati makes the partial gift an act of rasa, devotional intimacy within the jñāna of non-dual Being.
divergence: Restored from Madhusūdana's own phrasing: iyattā nāsti, sarvajñenāpi sā śakyate jñātuṃ vaktuṃ vā, san-mātra-viṣayatvāt sarvajñatāyāḥ, tvāṃ praty uddeśata ekadeśena prokto vibhūter vistāraḥ. The prior cell paraphrased these moves without quoting them; the devotional reading of tvāṃ prati is retained as Madhusūdana's own, not a projected supplement.

ekras · bhāṣya

There is no end to My divya vibhutis, parantapa. What I have spoken is uddeshatah — by way of indication — the vistara of My vibhuti. The verse fulfils 10.19's hanta — the chapter's promise to give the pradhana only. Now Krishna names that the catalog was uddeshatah — by indication, by selected example. The vistara was bounded by the format; the actual extent is unbounded.

Shankara reads the verse cleanly. There is no end — na antah — to Krishna's divya vibhutis. The catalog was uddeshatah — by way of pointing out — not exhaustive. The verse acknowledges what the disciple's earlier asheshena could not be granted: not because Krishna will not, but because the vibhutis are structurally unbounded.

Madhusudana reads the verse as the chapter's honest closure of the enumeration arc. The disciple was given the operating set; the actual set is infinite. The verse pre-empts any interpretation of the catalog as exhaustive: it was a sample, not the totality.

Ramanuja reads with characteristic warmth: Bhagavan's vibhutis are unbounded; the verse-form can name only the chief examples. The disciple's recognition is meant to extend from the named to the unnamed by the principle of seeing-as: anything that bears prominence in its class is similarly Bhagavan's vibhuti.

Madhva reads strictly: Hari's vibhutis are infinite; the catalog gives the principal channels for recognition.

Vallabha reads through pushti-marga: prasada flows through every operating excellence; the catalog gives the meditator a starting set, not a closed set.

Shridhara reads cleanly: na antah — no end — closes the catalog with the proper humility about its scope.

Context

where

Chapter 10 · Vibhūti-Yoga · meter anuṣṭubh

who speaks

Krishna → Arjuna · vocative Paranṭapa

preceded by — BG 10.39

I am the seed of every being, Arjuna. Nothing that moves or stands still could exist without me.

What's going on

There is no end to my divine manifestations, scorcher of enemies. What I have declared here is a summary only, one region of a glory that no speech can fully compass.

Vyavahāra · try it in your life

Advaita

When you finish a project or course of study and feel you have 'covered' a subject, pause: ask whether you have grasped a region (uddeśa) rather than a totality. The Advaita discipline trains the mind to hold partial maps without confusing them for the territory — cultivating intellectual humility not as weakness but as accurate perception of the infinite.

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Each time you encounter something beautiful or excellent — a colleague's skill, a piece of music, a well-made object — treat it as a kalyāṇī vibhūti, an auspicious form disclosing something of the divine. The Viśiṣṭādvaita application is to let every encounter with excellence expand your devotional attention rather than exhaust it.

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Dvaita

In relationships of authority and service — with a mentor, a parent, an institution you serve — Dvaita's lesson from this verse is that you cannot exhaust the source. Rather than trying to 'figure out' the person or system completely, the appropriate orientation is dependent attentiveness (upāsanā), remaining available to what has not yet been disclosed.

Śuddhādvaita

In the Puṣṭi-mārga spirit: make a practice of naming what you are grateful for not as a cognitive inventory but as a form of kīrtana — say the names aloud, slowly, knowing that the naming itself is participation in what is named. Vallabha's application is that speech about the good is never merely descriptive; it is always also an offering.

Bhakti

When you feel overwhelmed by complexity — too many facts, too many demands, too many paths — Śrīdhara's reading offers a practical anchor: a partial but reliable summary (saṃkṣepa) is enough to begin. The inability to hold everything at once is not a defect; it is the condition under which bhakti is designed to operate. Start with what you have been given.

Advaita-Bhakti

Madhusūdana's 'tvāṃ prati' — the teaching is addressed to you specifically — offers a daily practice: receive general wisdom (scriptural, philosophical, from teachers) as if it were personally sent. The Advaita-bhakti integration dissolves the split between impersonal truth and intimate relationship; any fragment of the infinite that reaches you has been proportioned to your capacity.

Adhiṣṭhāna · substrate signature

substratev2.6-frozen

parserByT5-Sanskrit-multitask (Nehrdich/Hellwig/Keutzer EMNLP 2024)

mūlaGRETIL e-text of the Bhagavadgītā with Śaṅkara's commentary (data entry: Gaudiya Grantha Mandira) for chapters 1-17; sanskritdocuments.org sd_bgnew.itx for chapter 18; ingested via a local Ambuda TEI build; per-verse repairs logged in post_generation_repairs

show all metadata

weightsa=1 · b=0.01 · e_v=0.005 · z=0.2 · h=0 · th=0.01

anchorfit on Ramsukhdas's Sādhak Sañjīvanī (1980), frozen across the eight-commentator panel; cross-validated R@4 = 71.6% on Śaṅkara

extracted2026-04-21

methodPaper 1, Section II.B

↓ view raw per-verse object (JSON)↗ per-verse-object schema ↗ substrate code (MIT) + data (CC-BY 4.0)

The schema generalizes to any bounded-polysemy corpus with discrete primary text units, attested witness traditions, identifiable schools, and formal substrate. Port the per-verse object; refit weights on a domain-appropriate Layer-3 anchor; ship.

Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 10, Verse 40: Krishna to Arjuna — Vibhūti-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports