Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 2, Verse 11: Krishna to Arjuna — Sāṅkhya-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Krishna opens with a double indictment: you mourn those who are not fit objects of mourning (ashochyan), namely Bhishma, Drona and the rest, who are nitya (eternal) in their paramartha-svarupa (ultimate nature), and yet you recite the words of the wise (prajna-vadan) as though wisdom were already yours. Shankara presses the contradiction hard: you behave like a madman who speaks sense and acts in frenzy at the same moment. The pandithas he invokes are not merely the learned but specifically atmajnas, those whose panda (intelligence) rests on atma-vishaya (the Self as object); only they do not grieve the dead or the living, because both categories are, in ultimate reality, nitya and therefore ashochya. The teaching that begins here is not consolation but diagnosis: Arjuna is mudha (deluded), and the rest of the Gita is the remedy.

  divergence: paramarthatastu tan nityan ashochyan anushochasi ato mudho si — in ultimate truth you grieve those who are eternal and ungrievable; therefore you are deluded

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Ramanuja reads 2.11 as a single compound diagnosis: Arjuna suffers from dehatma-svabhava-prajna — the understanding that the body is the Self — and all his arguments about ancestors losing pinda-offerings and clans being destroyed flow from that one confusion. Krishna is not merely calling Arjuna a fool; he is specifying the exact error so that its remedy can be precise. The atman is neither born nor destroyed (na janmadhina-sadbhavo na maranadina-vinashash cha), so it furnishes no ground for grief; the body, being acetana (insentient) and parinama-svabhava (naturally transforming), perishes by its own nature, so it too furnishes no ground for grief. Arjuna's fighting is itself the dharma that constitutes the upaya (means) toward atma-yathatmya-avapti (attainment of the Self's true nature), and refusing it is therefore not piety but ignorance.

  divergence: atma hi na janmadhina-sadbhavo na maranadina-vinashash cha — the atman's being does not depend on birth, nor is its destruction dependent on death

• Madhvadvaita

  Madhva is terse to the point of severity: Arjuna was enveloped in the net of moha (delusion) arising from attachment to relatives (bandhv-adi-moha-jala-samvritam), and what he mistakes for wisdom (prajna-vadan) are only the productions of his own mind (sva-manisha-uttha-vachanani), not the shastra. The Dvaita gloss holds the distinction absolutely: jivas are eternally distinct from Hari, their grief and delusion are real states of a real finite being, and the pandithas who do not grieve the dead (gatasun) are those who correctly understand Hari's sovereign governance over all life and death. To grieve is to misattribute agency — as though Arjuna, not Hari, were the cause of what will happen on Kurukshetra.

  divergence: prajna-vadan sva-manisha-uttha-vachanani — the so-called words of wisdom are only the productions of his own private mind

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha embeds 2.11 inside a larger architectonic: Krishna begins samkhya-buddhi (discriminative understanding) as the first of many upayas (approaches) — including vairagya (dispassion), jnana (knowledge), yoga and prema (love) — each capable alone of bringing siddhi if held with dridhata (firmness). The double reading of gatasun and agatasun is explicit: they can mean the dead and the living, or they can mean the inert and the conscious — the body (jada, non-Self, anatman) and the jivatman (chetana, conscious). Neither category is fit for grief, the pandithas understand both, and Arjuna who claims learning but still grieves reveals that he has not yet surrendered ahamta-mamata (I-ness and mine-ness) to Shri Krishna, which is the only complete resolution Pushti-marga recognizes.

  divergence: vairagya-jnana-yogaish cha premna cha tapasa tatha ekena api dridhena isham bhajan siddhim avapnuyat — by even one of these held with firmness, the devotee who worships the Lord attains fulfilment

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Shridhara reads the verse as Krishna catching Arjuna in a self-contradiction that even Krishna's earlier rebuke (kutastva kashmalam — wherefrom has this defilement come upon you?) had already attempted to dissolve. Arjuna recites the words of the pandita-class (prajna-vadan bhashase) — speaking of dharma, of ancestors, of lineage — but he is not himself a pandita, because a true pandita does not grieve either those who have died or those who survive bereft. Shridhara's devotional inflection is gentle: the entire arc of grief, speech, and finally silence before Krishna is itself a bhakta's path — Arjuna's breakdown is the prelude to complete surrender, and 2.11 marks the exact moment Bhagavan takes over the teaching.

  divergence: kutastva kashmalam ityadina maya bodhito pi punash cha prajnavatam vadan kevalam bhashase natu pandito si — though already addressed with wherefrom this defilement, still you merely speak the words of the wise without being one yourself

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusudana identifies two distinct mohas (delusions) layered in Arjuna and insists both must be dissolved separately. The first is universal: the superimposition of samsara-dharmas (birth, death, loss) onto the atman, which is svaprakasha-paramananda-rupa (self-luminous, of the nature of supreme bliss) and untouched by the three upadhis (gross body, subtle body, causal avidya). The second is Arjuna-specific: the misperception that yuddha (battle), because it involves himsa (violence), is adharma — a confusion Krishna will address as the chapter proceeds. Grief (shoka) is not separately cured; it dissolves automatically when its cause, the superimposition, is removed. As Madhusudana puts it with the rope-snake analogy: once you directly perceive the rope, the fear generated by the snake-illusion cannot persist, not even residually, because knowledge of the rope's reality is stronger than the habit of the error.

  divergence: shoka-karana-nivrittya eva nivritteh — grief ceases only through the removal of its cause, not by any separate remedy