Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 14, Verse 4: Krishna to Arjuna — Guṇatraya-Vibhāga-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  In all wombs (sarva-yoniṣu) — among gods, ancestors, humans, beasts, deer, and the rest — whatever embodied forms arise, their cause is the great Brahman (mahad brahma), the womb (yoni) that underlies all conditions of existence. I, the Lord (Ishvara), am the seed-giver (bija-pradah), the agent of insemination, hence the father. The apparent diversity of forms conceals a single causal substratum; the teaching turns the student toward the unitary ground rather than the multiplicity of effects.

  divergence: Shankara reads mahad brahma as 'Brahman in all its conditions' (sarvavastham) serving as the material cause; the Lord's role as bija-prada is strictly the efficient cause, not a personal bestowal of grace — this keeps the verse in the register of causal analysis preparatory to jnana.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Across every womb — gods, gandharvas, yakshas, rakshasas, humans, beasts, birds, reptiles — whatever forms are born, their material cause is the great Brahman (mahad brahma) understood as prakriti (Nature) in its phase from mahat through the special modifications, a prakriti that already holds the class of conscious beings (cetana-varga) joined to it by Me. I am the father, the bija-prada, who in accordance with each being's own prior karma places the appropriate conscious self within that material womb. The Lord is thus simultaneously the inner ordainer of prakriti and the assigner of embodied souls.

  divergence: Ramanuja's gloss 'maya samyojita-cetana-varga' (the class of conscious beings joined by Me) is central: prakriti is not inert stuff but already ensouled matter held within the divine body, making birth an act of kainkarya-ordering, not mere causal mechanism.

• Madhvadvaita

  *Mahad-brahma* (the great *prakṛti*, material nature) is the womb, the proximate receptacle into which *Kṛṣṇa* casts the seed — *ahaṃ bīja-pradaḥ pitā*, 'I am the seed-giving father.' Across *sarva-yoniṣu* (all species of birth), whatever *mūrtayaḥ* (embodied forms) arise, their material matrix is *prakṛti*; yet the efficient and ultimately real cause is *svatantra* (the independently real, self-sufficient) Hari alone. The *paratantra* (eternally dependent) *jīva* (the individual self) does not dissolve into either *prakṛti* or the Lord at birth or death; *bheda* (real distinction) between Lord, *jīva*, and *prakṛti* persists across every birth-cycle, sustained by the *pañca-bheda* (the five-fold real distinction: Lord–jīva, Lord–matter, jīva–jīva, jīva–matter, matter–matter). The father-seed image marks Hari as the sole *svatantra* origin: *prakṛti* receives, but cannot initiate. Each embodiment across species is a direct expression of the Lord's sovereign will over wholly *paratantra* souls — no birth dissolves the *bheda*, and no birth occurs without Hari's direct agency as *bīja-pradaḥ*.

  divergence: No Madhva or Jayatīrtha bhāṣya is transmitted for BG 14.4. Reading voiced directly from *dvaita* *siddhānta* applied to the *mūla*.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha reads the verse as Krishna's own declaration of his lila-srishti (playful creation): the entire creation of cit (conscious) and acit (inert) nature visible in every womb is made by Me alone. The great Brahman as womb and I as seed-giver is not a dyadic cause-and-effect but a self-disclosure of the one reality in the figure of father-and-field — just as Vishnu-Purana depicts Lakshmi-Narayana and Gauri-Shankara as the universal male-female pair pervading all. The world is Krishna's own form in the mode of prasada-srishti.

  divergence: Vallabha's gloss 'tasam bhuta-murtinam mahad-brahma yonih, aham bija-pradah pita iti vastuto avasyam' insists on the 'in reality' register (vastutah): the material-cause/efficient-cause grammar points beyond cosmology to Krishna's self-disclosure of sovereignty over his own lila.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  This is not merely a cosmogonic statement about the moment of creation: in all wombs at all times (sarvada), among humans and the rest, whatever moving and unmoving forms arise — the great Brahman, prakriti, is their womb in the manner of a mother, and I am the seed-giver, the agent of insemination (garbhadhana), the father. Sridhara emphasizes that prakriti and purusha, presided over by Krishna, are the continuous universal parents — not a once-for-all origination but the ever-present ground of all becoming.

  divergence: Sridhara's 'na kevalam srishty-upakrama eva' (not only at the beginning of creation) shifts the cosmological to the ongoing: 'sarvada eva' — always. The matri-sthaniya framing (mother-position) for prakriti is explicit in his text.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusudana addresses a prior objection: if all beings arise from the one Brahman stated in 14.3, how do we account for the specific bodily distinctions among gods and the rest, which seem to require separate causes? The answer: in all wombs — gods, ancestors, humans, beasts, deer — whatever forms arise in their variously shaped bodies (jarayuja, andaja, svedaja, udbhijja — born of womb, egg, sweat, or sprout), the great Brahman alone, in the condition of being their respective cause, is the mother-womb. I, the Parameshvara, am the bija-prada, the father who effects insemination. Therefore the so-called 'other causes' (karanantarani) are simply specific states of the one Brahman — the statement that all beings arise from that is entirely consistent.

  divergence: Madhusudana's phrasing 'tat-tat-karana-bhavapannam mahad brahma eva' (the great Brahman itself having assumed the condition of being their respective cause) resolves the objection by collapsing the apparent plurality of material causes into modal states of the single Brahman — a distinctively Advaita move framed within devotional acknowledgment of the Parameshvara.