Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 13, Verse 12: Krishna to Arjuna — Kṣetra-Kṣetrajña-Vibhāga-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  The knowable (jneya) is Brahman — beginningless, beyond cause, neither existent (sat) nor non-existent (asat), because it transcends all categories that apply to produced things. Sankara insists the twenty qualities from amanitvam onward are not themselves knowledge of the object; they are the cooperating causes (sahakari-karana) whose ripening makes tattva-jnana possible. The means must not be confused with the end: what is to be known is that which, when known, yields liberation (moksa) — the cessation of samsara.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  The knowable is the individual self (pratyag-atman) in its true nature: beginningless, unbounded by birth and death, and essentially mat-param — 'that of which I (Bhagavan) am the supreme' — because the self's deepest nature is to be the body of Brahman and wholly subordinate to Him. The labels sat and asat apply only to the self's karmic states — manifest (karya) and unmanifest (karana) — not to its essential form, which is pure and limitless. Ramanuja cites 'ya atmani tisthann atmanah' from the Brhadaranyaka to show that Bhagavan indwells and governs this self from within, making liberation an expansion into that innate anantya (infinity).

• Madhvadvaita

  The knowable here is the Paramatman known through direct, non-inferential cognition (aparoksa-jnana), accessed by right study of scripture (sastra-darsana) rather than by mere intellectual analysis. Madhva's comment is terse by design: tattva-jnana-artha-darsanam is the direct vision of the Supreme's real nature, not a mediated conclusion — and that vision is the sole purpose of all the epistemic disciplines named earlier. The jiva remains eternally distinct; what is 'known' is Hari's supremacy, not identity with Him.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha draws the line cleanly: the twenty qualities Krsna has described constitute vidya-karya — the fruit of true knowing (vidya) — while their opposites (manitvam, etc.) are avidya-karya, the fruit of ignorance. The knowable is therefore Brahman as the one in whom vidya and avidya exhaust their respective functions; knowing It means crossing out of avidya's domain entirely. In Pusta-marga terms, this crossing is not achieved but granted — Krsna's grace (prasada) dissolves what avidya built.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Sridhara reads the verse as completing the list: the twenty qualities from amanitvam to tattva-jnana-artha-darsana are called 'jnana' (knowledge) precisely because they are its instruments (jnana-sadhanatva); their opposites — pride, deceit, violence — are called 'ajnana' and are to be abandoned as causes of samsara's continuation. What is then knowable is the atman in its purity, the referent of the tvam-pada once stripped of adventitious superimpositions. Knowing it yields amrtam — immortality — which Sridhara glosses as liberation from birth-death cycling.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusudana synthesises: the twenty qualities culminate in tattva-jnana-artha-darsana — contemplating the goal, which is the direct cognition expressed as 'aham brahmasmi' (I am Brahman), arising through Vedanta-vakya as instrument, with all prior disciplines as its ripening conditions. The knowable Brahman is neither sat nor asat because those terms track produced states; pure Brahman stands prior to any karya-karana series. The bhakti inflection enters in the word 'amrtam asnute': it is tasted (asnute), not merely concluded — viveka-nistha makes one fit for that savoring, and Krsna's grace seals it.