Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 18, Verse 47: Krishna to Arjuna — Mokṣa-Sannyāsa-Yoga
Your own duty, even imperfectly done, is better than another's duty done well. Acting within the nature you were born to, you take on no sin.
Bhāṣyakāra purports
- Śaṅkaraadvaita
One's own dharma (sva-dharma), even if deficient (vi-guna, ‘lacking qualities'), is more to be preferred than another's dharma well-executed (su-anushthitat para-dharmat). Shankara grounds this in the analogy of a poisonous worm: the same venom that harms others is the worm's natural element and causes it no sin. Svabhava-niyatam karma — action determined by one's own nature — incurs no demerit (kilbisham), because acting contrary to one's svabhava (constitutive nature) generates the real bondage, not the action itself. The verse restates the principle of BG 3.35: para-dharma is always fraught with danger (bhayavahah), and since no one remains even a moment without acting (BG 3.5), niskriya-ness is not an option — only disciplined alignment with one's own constitutive nature prepares the ground for jnana.
- Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita
The sva-dharma praised here is karma-yoga recast as mad-aradhana — service offered as worship of Bhagavan, with kartritva (agency) relinquished. For a soul embedded in prakriti (prakriti-samsrishta purusha), karma-yoga is the connatural path: indriya-vyapara (sense-engagement) is structurally easy, hence svabhavata eva niyata — fixed by nature itself. Jnana-yoga, by contrast, demands sakala-indriya-niyamana (total sense-restraint), is liable to pramada (lapse), and so even when perfectly performed is fraught with the danger of slipping. Thus karma-yoga, though ‘deficient' in renunciatory austerity, is superior precisely because it is lapse-resistant — the practitioner does not incur samsara (kilbisham = samsara) because the path itself is structurally suited to the embodied jiva's nature. Ramanuja re-anchors the argument of the third chapter: karma-nishtha is indeed greater for the generality of bound souls.
- Madhvadvaita
Reconstructed from the dvaita school's doctrine, not translated from Madhva's commentary at this verse.
Svadharma (one's own duty, station-specific obligation) imperfectly performed excels paradharma (another's duty) well performed — śreyān svadharmo viguṇaḥ paradharmātsvanuṣṭhitāt. Performing svabhāvaniyataṃ karma (action fixed by one's own nature), one does not incur kilbiṣam (sin, ontological stain). In the dvaita reading, svabhāva is not an autonomous self-determination but the specific nature Hari has apportioned to each paratantra jīva (the eternally dependent individual self) within the taratamya (graded ontological hierarchy) of pañca-bheda (the five-fold real distinction). Every jīva occupies a fixed rank in Hari's sovereign order; the karma that belongs to that rank is Hari's assignment, not the jīva‘s own invention. To perform it — even deficiently — is bhakti (devotion) as ontological subordination: the jīva acting within the station svatantra (the independently real, self-sufficient) Hari has ordained. To cross into paradharma is not mere ritual error but a presumption against that dispensation, a violation of bheda (real distinction) between one's own assigned function and another's. Kilbiṣam is therefore the stain of misalignment with one's Hari-given svarūpa, not a merely procedural failing. The viguṇa qualification — imperfect execution — is tolerated; usurpation of another's station is not.
- Vallabhaśuddhādvaita
Vallabha reads the verse as direct instruction to Arjuna that svabhava — the specific mode of each varna (brahmin, kshatriya, etc.) — is Bhagavan's own lila-prasada distributed as constitutive function. The kshatriya's sva-dharma is yuddha (battle); executing it, even imperfectly (vi-guna), is preferable to the brahmin's bhiksha-atana (begging) however well-performed, because the former is the form in which Krishna's grace (pushti) flows through that jiva's nature. Vallabha's comment is terse and imperative: ‘thus karma-nishtha alone is greater' — he explicitly links this back to the third chapter's teaching, framing both as consistent guidance that pure devotion expressed through one's God-given station is liberation, not obstacle.
- Śrīdharabhakti
Sridhara reads the verse as the payoff (phalam) of the ‘sva-karman' qualifier that preceded it. His key move is an explicit counter-argument: one must not conclude that bhiksha-atana (begging alms, the brahmin's para-dharma) is superior to yuddha (battle, Arjuna's sva-dharma) merely because battle involves the sin of slaying kinsmen. Against this, Sridhara applies svabhava-niyatam: Arjuna's fighting is regulated by the very nature previously described — his warrior constitution — and so incurs no kilbisham (sin). The argument is structural and devotionally grounded: adhering to the svabhava Bhagavan has constituted in you is itself an act of trust in the ordering intelligence behind creation, not mere ritualism.
- Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti
Madhusudana introduces a decisive framing absent in Shankara: sva-dharma is ‘bhagavat-prasada-hetu' — the very cause of Bhagavan's grace. This is the synthesis: karma performed as sva-dharma is simultaneously Advaita preparation (niskriya-bhava) and bhakti (prasada-reception). Even deficiently performed, it surpasses para-dharma perfectly done, because the grace-channel is intact. Madhusudana then directly answers the kilbisham objection: svabhava-niyatam yuddha-karma for a kshatriya is analogous to the ritual-mandated animal sacrifice in the Jyotishtoma — mandated action, even if it involves apparent harm (bandhu-vadha, slaying of kin), incurs no sin-residue (pratya-vaya) because the injunction is Bhagavan-sourced. The binding is dissolved at the point of svabhava-alignment with divine prescription.