Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 16, Verse 14: Krishna to Arjuna — Daivāsura-Sampad-Vibhāga-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  The asuric (demonic) mind, inflated by ahamkara (ego-identification), rehearses its slaughters: ‘That enemy has been killed by me; I shall kill the rest also.’ Shankara reads these boasts as the signature of one wholly absorbed in kartrtva-bhrama (the illusion of doership) — claiming lordship (ishvarata), enjoyment, perfection, strength, and happiness as inherently ‘mine.’ For the Advaitin, this is avidya (ignorance) in its densest form: the jiva (individual soul) mistakes its superimposed individuality for ultimate reality, generating the entire chain of grasping and violence.

  divergence: Shankara does not moralize; he catalogs the claims clinically as symptoms of ahamkara, leaving the soteriological diagnosis implicit.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Ramanuja reads the verse as the declaration of one who has collapsed the distinction between Bhagavan's svadhinata (sovereignty) and his own — claiming ‘I am the lord (ishvara), self-sufficient (svayam siddha), the enjoyer by my own nature, powerful by myself.’ This is the precise inversion of kainkarya (joyful servitude to Bhagavan): the asura arrogates to itself what belongs only to Narayana. Strength, happiness, and fulfillment are real, but they are Bhagavan's prasada (grace), never the jiva's own property.

  divergence: Unlike Shankara who targets ahamkara as cognitive error, Ramanuja targets the theological usurpation of divine attributes — a distinction with devotional import.

• Madhvadvaita

  Reconstructed from the dvaita school's doctrine, not translated from Madhva's commentary at this verse.

  Asau mayā hataḥ śatrur haniṣye cāparān api | īśvaro ‘ham ahaṃ bhogī siddho ‘haṃ balavān sukhī — the āsura jīva proclaims itself lord, enjoyer, self-accomplished, powerful, and happy. Each boast is a direct inversion of the pañca-bheda (the five-fold real distinction): the jīva arrogates to itself the svatantra (independently real, self-sufficient) status that belongs to Hari alone. Īśvaro ‘ham — ‘I am lord' — is the precise negation of Hari's sarva-niyantṛtva (absolute sovereign control over all). Ahaṃ bhogī denies that enjoyment flows only through Hari's dispensation; siddho ‘ham refuses the paratantra (eternally dependent) constitution of every jīva without exception. In the Dvaita siddhānta, such self-assertion is not an intellectual error that instruction can dissolve; it expresses a virodhitva (constitutional opposition to Hari) native to the tāmasa grade of jīva. The taratamya (graded ontological hierarchy) places these beings at the antipodal extreme from Mukti-yogya souls: their orientation away from bhakti as ontological subordination is not circumstantial but fixed in their very svabhāva (inherent nature). The verse thus names, in the āsura‘s own voice, the exact shape of bondage: self-declared svatantra where only paratantra is real.

  divergence: Dvaita alone reads the āsura‘s self-proclamation as expressing a constitutive virodhitva grounded in taratamya — not a correctable confusion about selfhood but a grade-determined antipathy to Hari's sovereignty. Other schools treat the error as epistemic; Dvaita treats it as ontological.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha's brief gloss points to abheda (non-difference) missed: the asura grasps at ‘I have killed that one' without recognizing that the very power by which he acts is Krishna's own shakti (divine power) moving through him as lila-prasada (the grace of divine play). The moha (delusion) is not in acting or enjoying, but in the appropriation — ‘ishvaro'ham... modishye' (I am lord, I shall revel) — severing the act from its true locus in Krishna's ananda (bliss). Pushti-marga would say: every act of lordship that excludes Krishna's presence is spiritual poverty dressed as triumph.

  divergence: Vallabha alone frames the error as severed ananda rather than usurped sovereignty or cognitive avidya — the devotional valence is experiential, not primarily epistemic.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Sridhara's gloss is deliberately spare — ‘siddha: kritakrtyah' (accomplished: one who has done what needed doing) — indicating that the word ‘siddha' in the verse is being used in its worldly sense of one who considers himself ‘fulfilled in all respects,’ a bitter irony since true kritakrtyata (completion) is bhagavat-priti (God-pleasing), which the asura wholly lacks. The rest Sridhara marks as ‘spashta' (self-evident): the litany of self-congratulation is transparent in its ugliness and requires no elaborate commentary.

  divergence: Sridhara's restraint contrasts with Madhusudan's expansive psychological unpacking — both are bhakti-inflected, but Sridhara trusts the text's self-evidence while Madhusudan teaches through elaboration.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusudan reads this verse as Krishna expounding the interior logic of asuric krodha (anger) and lobha (greed): having catalogued greed in 16.13, Krishna now shows how that greed generates a fantasy of omnipotence — ‘I shall kill all remaining enemies, none will escape me, and their wealth too I shall seize.’ The claim to ishvarata (lordship) then unpacks itself: I am the enjoyer (bhogi) equipped with all means of pleasure, I am siddha (accomplished) surrounded by sons and servants, I am balavat (strong) by my own vitality, I am sukhi (happy) and entirely free of disease. Madhusudan traces the psychological cascade: greed feeds the delusion of incomparability, which demands the elimination of rivals, which requires belief in one's own godhood.

  divergence: Madhusudan alone makes the psychological sequencing explicit — lobha (greed) generates the fantasy of ishvarata (lordship), which in turn demands krodha-fueled elimination of all rivals; this cascade reading is absent in the other schools.