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

  *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.