Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 16, Verse 13: Krishna to Arjuna — Daivāsura-Sampad-Vibhāga-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Shankara reads this verse as a portrait of the asuric mind's captivity to the ahankara (ego-sense), cataloguing possessions: 'this wealth I have gained today, this desire I will fulfill, this exists already and more will come.' The asura's error is total: he takes the fruits of past karma as self-won trophies, and projects future accumulation as certainty. For Shankara this fantasy-cartography of 'mine' is precisely what brahma-jnana dissolves — the one who knows the non-dual Self has nothing to acquire, for nothing was ever absent.

  divergence: Shankara emphasizes cognitive error (the root in mithya-jnana) over moral failure — the asura is not evil so much as epistemically blind.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Ramanuja's bhashya turns on the phrase 'mat-samarthyena eva' — the asura insists his kshetra (fields), sons, and desires were obtained by his own power alone, with no part played by adrshta (unseen merit) or Bhagavan's grace. This is the defining asuric inversion: attributing all to personal potency while erasing the sustaining presence of Ishvara. For Ramanuja, karma-yoga is precisely the corrective — acting with the recognition that all capacity (samarthya) is ultimately the Lord's, held in trust.

  divergence: Ramanuja uniquely specifies kshetra-putra (fields, sons) as the objects of possessive pride, grounding the verse in householder reality and making the contrast with kainkarya vivid.

• Madhvadvaita

  *Idam adya mayā labdham idam prāpsye manoratham* — 'This I have gained today; this desire I shall fulfil; this is mine, and this wealth too shall come again to me.' The *āsura* (demonic) speaker rehearses a chain of possessions past and anticipated, each framed by *mayā* (by me), as though the *jīva* (the individual self) were *svayam-prabhu*, self-originating cause of its own acquisitions. Within dvaita's *pañca-bheda* (the five-fold real distinction), this is an ontological inversion: the *jīva* is irreducibly *paratantra* (eternally dependent), every gain traceable to *svatantra* Hari's will alone. To say *mayā labdham* — 'obtained by me' — without acknowledging Hari as the sole bestower is not merely moral pride but a violation of *bheda* (real distinction): the *jīva* usurping the causal status that belongs only to the Lord. The three-fold repetition of *idam* (this... this... this) mirrors the *āsura*'s bondage: *taratamya* (graded ontological hierarchy) is collapsed into a flat self-referential inventory, Hari nowhere acknowledged. *Bhakti* as ontological subordination is precisely what this speech refuses; the speaker's every utterance is its antithesis.

  divergence: No bhāṣya by Madhva or Jayatīrtha is attested for this verse. The reading applies dvaita *siddhānta* directly to the mūla.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha's bhashya is minimal ('idam adya maya labdham iti spastam' — this is self-evident), which is itself a stylistic marker: for Pushti-marga the asuric condition is simply the absence of Bhagavad-prasada. The asura catalogues acquisitions because he has never tasted Krsna's lila-rasa; all possessive craving is the void that rushes in when divine grace is withheld or refused. Vallabha's rendering thus reads the verse not as psychological analysis but as a negative icon — the soul un-touched by prasada naturally speaks exactly this way.

  divergence: Vallabha's terse treatment contrasts sharply with Shankara and Madhusudana's analytical expansion; the rendering emphasizes grace-absence rather than cognitive or moral failure.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Sridhara frames this verse as the opening of a four-verse block (caturbhih) depicting the 'mano-rajya' (mind-kingdom, wishful fantasy-realm) of the asura, which culminates in naraka-prapti (attainment of hell). He parses 'mano-ratham' as 'what is pleasing to the mind' and notes the syntactic linkage: these three shlokas are jointly explained by the fourth ('ajnana-vimohitah santo narake patanti'). The asura's triple temporal claim — gained today, will gain soon, already has more — is the exact structure of samsaric hope, the fuel of rebirth.

  divergence: Sridhara's contribution is structural: he is the only school here that explicitly frames 16.13 as part of a four-verse syntactic unit with a deferred predicate.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusudana gives the richest psychological portrait: the asura's dhana-trsna (thirst for wealth) runs as an unbroken stream across three time-registers — 'labdham idanim anena upayena' (gained now by this method), 'shigrameva prapsye' (will gain very soon), 'puraveva sanchitam grhe asti' (already stored at home), and 'bahutaram bhavisyati agamini samvatsare' (yet more will come next year). This four-fold expansion of a single half-verse reveals how trsna (craving) colonizes time itself. Madhusudana then snaps the connection forward to the naraka verse: 'evam dhana-trsnakulas patanti narake ashucau' — those overwhelmed by wealth-craving fall into impure hell.

  divergence: Madhusudana alone lexically unpacks 'upaya' (method/means) — the asura is not just acquisitive but strategically acquisitive, which deepens the moral indictment.