Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 17, Verse 10: Krishna to Arjuna — Śraddhātraya-Vibhāga-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Food that is yata-yama (half-cooked or stale, having lost its potency), gata-rasa (drained of juice and vitality), puti (putrid in smell), paryusita (kept overnight after cooking), ucchishta (the leavings of another's meal), and amedhya (unfit for sacrifice) — such food is dear to the tamasic person. Shankara identifies yata-yama as food whose virya (potency) has gone, gata-rasa as separately indicating the loss of rasa itself, and amedhya as ayajnarha (unworthy of yajna). The tamasic person's preference for such food sustains the tamas that veils discriminative knowledge (viveka), thereby perpetuating bondage and obstructing the jnana-marga.

  divergence: Shankara: 'yatayamam mandapakva... nirviyasya gatarasashabdena uktatvat... amedhyam ayajnarham'

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Food long-standing (cirakalavasthita), stripped of its natural rasa, foul-smelling, transformed by the passage of time (kalatipattya rasantarapanna), left over from the meals of those other than one's guru and superiors (gurvadibyah anyesham bhuktashishtam), and unworthy of yajna-offering — such tamo-maya food is dear to the tamasic and further increases tamas. Ramanuja adds the practical soteriological counsel: therefore, those who wish the good of the jiva should cultivate sattvika-ahara for the increase of sattva. Food is not mere sustenance but a constitutive condition of the bhakti-yoga preparation that enables kainkarya (loving service) to Bhagavan.

  divergence: Ramanuja: 'kalatipattya rasantarapanna... hitaishibhih sattvavriddhaye sattvikahara eva sevyah'

• Madhvadvaita

  *Yāta-yāma* (food whose time has passed), *gata-rasa* (food drained of taste and vitality), *pūti* (putrid), *paryuṣita* (stale from overnight storage), *ucchiṣṭa* (leavings from another's meal), and *amedhya* (ritually impure) — such food is *tāmasa-priya*, the preference of the *tāmasika* *jīva*. *Tamas* binds the *paratantra* *jīva* most heavily, pulling it away from the *sattva* required for steady *bhakti* to the *svatantra* Hari. The *pañca-bheda* between Hari and *jīva*, and between *jīva* and matter, is not suspended by a degraded *āhāra* (food-regimen); rather, the *jīva*'s constitutional dependence on Hari becomes practically inoperative when *tamas* is fed and thickened. Food that is *pūti* and *amedhya* does not merely displease the senses — it consolidates the *jīva*'s gravitational pull toward *adho-gati* (downward movement), making *bhagavad-bhakti* inaccessible rather than merely difficult. The *taratamya* among *jīva*s is expressed partly through the mode of food they choose: the lowest *jīva*s, most deeply enmeshed in *tamas*, incline by nature to *yāta-yāma* and *ucchiṣṭa*, confirming the graded ontological hierarchy the Lord names here.

  divergence: Madhva and Jayatīrtha are silent on this verse; the rendering voices Dvaita *siddhānta* — *paratantra* *jīva*, *pañca-bheda*, *taratamya* — directly off the *mūla*.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  That which has stood long (cirakalavasthita) and is thus bereft of the freshness and fragrance that mark Krsna's prasada — stale, putrid, leftover, sacrificially unworthy food — is dear to the tamasic. In the Pushti-marga, food derives its purifying potency only as prasada, the overflow of Krsna's own ananda-lila; food that has lost rasa has, in the most literal sense, lost the divine rasa itself. The tamasic person's preference for ucchishta and amedhya reflects an inversion of the Pushti ideal: instead of receiving Krsna's leavings (maha-prasada) one consumes the leavings of ignorance.

  divergence: Vallabha: 'cirakalavasthitam tamasapriyam' — minimal; rendering extended from Shuddhadvaita prasada-doctrine.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Food cooked a full prahara (watch) ago and now cold (yata-yama = yatr praharo yasya pakvasya, shaitya-avastha-prapta), from which the sap has been pressed out (nishipitasara), foul-smelling, cooked the previous day (dinantar-apakva), left over from another's eating, and amedhya — that is, abhakshya such as kalanja (forbidden foods) — such food is dear to the tamasic person. Sridhara's bhakti-philological reading carefully unpacks each compound against the lived experience of food preparation, grounding the classification in observable, practical distinctions rather than purely metaphysical ones, so that the devotee can make concrete choices.

  divergence: Sridhara: 'yato yamah praharo yasya pakvasya odanades tad yatayamam... amedhyam abhakshyam kalanjadi'

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Yata-yama is food half-cooked (ardhapakva), or, as the bhashya (Shankara) specifies, food already covered by gata-rasa; Madhusudan extends this: cooked rice and the like that have become cold after a prahara, drained of their extract, while paryushita is that which has been kept overnight and, he notes, includes dhattura (intoxicants) that produce mental disturbance. Ucchishta is the residue of another's eating; amedhya is the impure including mamsa (meat). Madhusudan then provides a systematic three-column analysis showing how the tamasic food-group opposes the sattvika point by point — gatarasatva opposes rasya, yatayamatva opposes snigdha, paryushitatva opposes sthira — while the tamasic group carries both the seen (drshta) and unseen (adrshta) harm that the rajasic carries only in the seen dimension. The synthesis: even the physician's ayurvedic apathya is subsumed here by the particle api-ca, yoking vaidyaka-shastra to the Gita's threefold classification.

  divergence: Madhusudan: 'nirviyasya gatarasapadena uktatvad iti bhashyam... tattvika-varge drishta-adrshta-virodha iti atishayah'