Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 11, Verse 30: Arjuna to Krishna — Viśvarūpa-Darśana-Yoga
Your blazing mouths lick and swallow the worlds whole, and your fierce radiance fills the entire universe, scorching all of it, O Vishnu.
Bhāṣyakāra purports
- Śaṅkaraadvaita
You lick (lelihyase) all the worlds (lokān samāgrān) simultaneously, drawing them inward through your blazing mouths (vadanair jvaladbhir), as if tasting the very substance of manifestation before it dissolves back into the undifferentiated. Filling (āpūrya) the entire universe (jagat samagram) with your radiance (tejobhir), your fierce luminosities (bhāsas tava ugrāḥ) scorch all appearance — an objectless consuming, for the one who consumes and the consumed are the same Brahman. The fierce epithet ‘Viṣṇo' (pervader) here signals that this devouring is not action upon an other but the Self (ātman) recognizing its own all-pervading nature through the dissolution of apparent multiplicity.
divergence: Śaṅkara glosses lelihyase as āsvādayasi (you taste/savor), grasamānaḥ as antaḥ praveśayan (causing to enter within), and jvalādbhir as dīpyamānaiḥ (blazing); Viṣṇo is glossed as vyāpanaśīla (one whose nature is pervasion). The consuming is framed as the Self's own activity with no external recipient.
- Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita
With the impetus of divine wrath (kopavega), you devour all the worlds (lokān samagrān) through your blazing mouths and lick their bloodied remnants (tadrudhirāvasiktam oṣṭhapuṭādikam) again and again — an act that is simultaneously terrifying and the supreme expression of your unobstructed lordship (aiśvaryam nirankhusham). Your fierce rays (atighora bhāsah) fill the entire cosmos (jagat samagram āpūrya) with your own luminosities (svakīyaiḥ prakāśaiḥ) and scorch it; this unbounded sovereignty was precisely what Arjuna had requested to behold (‘darśayātmānam avyayam', 11.4). The worlds and their lords are real, held within Brahman as the body (śarīra) within the soul, and here that body is being transfigured by the soul's own sovereign fire.
divergence: Rāmānuja explicitly glosses the licking as repeated lapping of blood-soaked lips (tadrudhirāvasiktam oṣṭhapuṭādikam lelihyase) and ties the whole verse back to Arjuna's 11.4 petition, framing the horror as the fulfillment of the requested darśana of nirankhusa aiśvarya.
- Madhvadvaita
Reconstructed from the dvaita school's doctrine, not translated from Madhva's commentary at this verse.
Viṣṇo — the address itself is the doctrinal center: Arjuna names the svatantra (the independently real, self-sufficient) Lord directly. Lelihyase grasamānaḥ samantāt — you lick and devour on all sides; lokān samagrān — the totality of worlds, each populated by jīvas (paratantra, eternally dependent), none of whom resist or redirect this consumption. The vadanair jvaladbhiḥ (blazing mouths) are not metaphor but the actual instrument of Hari‘s sovereign act: dissolution is His will, not a cosmological mechanism shared with any jīva. Tejobhir āpūrya jagat samagraṃ — filling the entire cosmos with his radiance — marks the pañca-bheda (the five-fold real distinction: Lord–jīva, Lord–matter, jīva–jīva, jīva–matter, matter–matter) as asymmetric: the blazing light belongs solely to the svatantra side, while jīva and matter are what get filled, scorched, consumed. Bhāsas tavogrāḥ pratapanti — your fierce brilliances scorch — and that scorching falls upon paratantra beings who are wholly subordinate. The taratamya (graded ontological hierarchy) among jīvas is irrelevant here: high or low, all are consumed equally before Viṣṇu‘s blazing sovereignty. No jīva acts; no jīva blazes. Only the svatantra Hari licks, devours, fills, and scorches.
divergence: Madhva did not comment on this verse. Rendering extrapolated from Madhva's central doctrines: absolute svātantrya of Hari, eternal paratantrya of jīvas, and the ontological distinction that makes the consuming Lord radically other than the consumed worlds.
- Vallabhaśuddhādvaita
You lick them (tān lelihyase) — the worlds are tasted by Kṛṣṇa as the very bliss (ānanda) of his own līlā (divine play), not as an external act of destruction but as the supreme Puruṣottama drawing his own manifestation back into the sweetness of his being. Vallabha's comment is spare: ‘tān lelihyase — O Viṣṇo, pervader, the rest is clear (anyat spaṣṭam),’ trusting that the devotee already feels this as the intimacy of Kṛṣṇa's own joy rather than a cosmic terror. In Puṣṭi-mārga, even the devastating universal form is prasāda — grace bestowed, not punishment inflicted.
divergence: Vallabha's commentary is minimal: ‘tān lelihyase. he Viṣṇo vyāpanaśīla anyat spaṣṭam.’ The brevity itself is the hermeneutic gesture — where others elaborate horror, Vallabha passes through it as self-evident and intimate.
- Śrīdharabhakti
Licking (lelihyase) — grasamānaḥ, that is, gilan (swallowing) — you devour from all sides (samantāt) all these warriors, samagrān lokān sarvān etān vīrān, through blazing mouths (jvaladbhir vadanaiḥ), consuming them to an extreme degree (atiśayena bhakṣayasi). And further, O Viṣṇo: your bhāsaḥ, that is, dīptayaḥ (radiances), by their tejobhir visphuranaiḥ (flashings of light) having pervaded the whole universe (samastam jagad vyāpya), scorch and torment (pratapanti santāpayanti) — ugrāḥ, that is, tīvrāḥ (fierce), as they are.
divergence: The contaminated cell appended a meta-narrative sentence (‘Śrīdhara sees the verse as Arjuna's continuous observation…’) projecting a devotional-surrender conclusion not present in Śrīdhara's bhāṣya, which is pure philological gloss. Removed. Sanskrit glosses now keyed directly to the bhāṣya's own sequences: gilan, atiśayena bhakṣayasi, dīptayaḥ, visphuranaiḥ, samastam jagad vyāpya, pratapanti santāpayanti, tīvrāḥ.
- Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti
Having described how the warrior-kings enter the Lord's mouths in their eagerness to fight, Madhusūdana now describes the character of that entering and the nature of the Lord's blazing: you draw in (grasamānaḥ antaḥpraveśayan) all these worlds — Duryodhana and all the others (duryodhanādīn samagrān) — licking them (lelihyase, āsvādayasi) from all sides (samantāt) through blazing mouths (jvaladbhir vadanaiḥ). The luminosities (bhābhiḥ) themselves fill the entire universe (jagat samagram āpūrya); your fierce blazings (ugrāḥ tīvrā bhāsaḥ dīptayaḥ) scorch (santāpaṃ janayanti) like a conflagration. O Viṣṇu, pervader — the terror is the Advaita truth seen by a devotee: the One consuming the apparent many, which were never separate from it.
divergence: Madhusūdana names the warriors explicitly (duryodhanādīn), glosses lelihyase as āsvādayasi, and characterizes the bhāsaḥ as tejobhiḥ bhābhiḥ. His synthesis frames the scene as both theological truth (Advaita: one consuming apparent multiplicity) and devotional event (the Bhagavān's own blazing revealed to his devotee).