Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 18, Verse 1: Krishna to Arjuna — Mokṣa-Sannyāsa-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Arjuna addresses Krsna with three epithets — Mahabaho (great-armed), Hrsikesa (master of senses), Kesanisudana (slayer of the Kesi-asura) — each chosen to invoke the Lord's power over external and internal obstacles. Sankara notes that sannyasa (renunciation) and tyaga (abandonment) have been used in earlier chapters without their precise senses being settled; Arjuna therefore asks for their tattva (essential meaning, 'thatness of the thing'), each separately (prthak). For Sankara, the inquiry is grammatical-philosophical before it is devotional: two terms, unresolved meanings, now to be distinguished by the knower of Brahman.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Ramanuja opens by anchoring the question in sruti: 'By tyaga alone some attain immortality' (Mahanaraya na 8.14) and 'sannyasa-yogins with purified sattva attain Brahmaloka' (Mundaka 3.2.6). Arjuna wants to know whether sannyasa and tyaga are synonymous or distinct — if distinct, their separate svarupa (essential natures); if synonymous, what single svarupa obtains. The inquiry is practical-soteriological: both are prescribed as moksa-sadhana (means to liberation), and their relationship determines which path belongs to which adhikari (qualified practitioner). Ramanuja will show that loving kainkarya (service) informs both terms.

• Madhvadvaita

  Arjuna addresses Kṛṣṇa by three epithets — *mahābāho* (mighty-armed), *hṛṣīkeśa* (lord of the senses), *keśiniṣūdana* (slayer of Keśin) — and asks to know *pṛthak*, separately and distinctly, the *tattva* (true nature) of *saṃnyāsa* and *tyāga*. Madhva opens with a salutation: *anantaguṇapūrṇāya namaḥ* — homage to the one filled with infinite qualities — marking Kṛṣṇa's *svatantra* (independently real, self-sufficient) fullness as the ground of the entire chapter. The bhāṣya then states the chapter's purpose: *pūrvoktaṃ sādhanam sarvaṃ saṅkṣipyopasaṃharatyanenaddhyāyena* — by this chapter, all the *sādhana* (means of attainment) taught previously is gathered up and brought to conclusion. Jayatīrtha glosses *sādhanam* as *jñānasādhanam* — the means of *jñāna* (knowledge) — and forestalls the objection that repeating what has been stated is pointless: *uktasyoktirvyarthety āśaṅkānirāsāya saṅkṣipyopasaṃharatītyuktam*. The compression is not redundancy but summation. Jayatīrtha adds that the chapter also introduces what has not yet been treated: *anuktaṃ traiguṇyaṃ ca vaktītyapi grāhyam* — the doctrine of the three *guṇas* not previously expounded is likewise to be received here. Arjuna's twofold question — the *bheda* (real distinction) between *saṃnyāsa* and *tyāga* — is thus posed at the threshold of a chapter that, for Dvaita, recapitulates the *paratantra* (eternally dependent) *jīva*'s entire course of *sādhana* under the sovereign fullness of *anantaguṇapūrṇa* Hari.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha places a mangalacarana verse at chapter's head: 'In the eighteenth, the meaning of the Gita is stated through the determination of tyaga and sannyasa; abandoning all dharmas, shelter alone is called moksa.' He observes that in passages such as 'the self-controlled one renounces all actions by mind' (BG 5.13) and 'abandoning attachment to fruit of action' (BG 4.20), both terms have already appeared — but whether they are co-extensive or distinct remains unsettled (avasesita-tattva-bubhutsaya). Arjuna's question is the residual inquiry after the entire prior teaching; in Pustimarga terms, even the asking is a form of saranagati (surrender), for only the soul fully dependent on Krsna's prasada would want to understand the precise boundaries of what must be relinquished.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Sridhara begins with a summary verse announcing that Ch. 18 gathers the whole Gita's meaning through the sannyasa-tyaga distinction for the sake of paramartha-viniscaya (determination of the highest truth). He rehearses the apparent contradiction in the prior teaching: BG 5.13 teaches renunciation of all actions; BG 4.20 and 12.12 teach performance of action with renunciation of its fruit. A fully omniscient and supremely compassionate Bhagavan cannot teach contradictions, so Arjuna asks for the principle that reconciles them. Sridhara's gloss on the epithets is devotionally concrete: Kesanisudana is explained in vivid detail — Kesi was a demon in horse-form who came with mouth agape to devour, and the Lord thrust his arm in, then expanded it like a karkati fruit to split the demon — hence 'Mahabaho' follows naturally as a second address.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusudhana Sarasvati provides the most analytically layered rendering. He distinguishes three types of sannyasa: (1) post-jnana total renunciation (described in Ch. 14 as gunatitata, beyond the gunas — not subject to sattva/rajas/tamas division); (2) pre-jnana renunciation in pursuit of Vedanta-vicara (covered under 'nistraigunyo bhava Arjuna,' BG 2.45 — also beyond guna-division); (3) renunciation by those in whom neither jnana nor jijnasa (desire to know) has arisen — only this third form admits the sattva-rajas-tamas threefold division, and it is this sannyasa Arjuna is asking about. Tyaga similarly asks: are the two terms genus-and-species like 'brahmin-and-wanderer,' or wholly distinct like 'pot-and-cloth'? The triple epithets mark three competences: Mahabaho (power against external obstacles), Kesanisudana (power against external demonic forces), Hrsikesa (power against internal obstacles) — a structural reading no other school makes explicit.