Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 2, Verse 16: Krishna to Arjuna — Sāṅkhya-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  The bhāṣya opens with a relentless epistemological test: every vikāra (modification), scrutinized by pramāṇa (valid cognition), dissolves — the pot exists only as clay, just as śīta-uṣṇa (cold and heat) exists only as superimposition on ātman. Śaṅkara distinguishes two cognitions present in every object: sat-buddhi (the invariant awareness 'it is') and ghaṭa-buddhi (the variable object-cognition 'it is a pot'); when the pot perishes, the ghaṭa-buddhi lapses, but sat-buddhi migrates to the cloth, the elephant, everywhere — it never lapses. The anta (conclusion) seen by the tattva-darśins (those who see the true nature of Brahman, since tat = Brahman) is therefore absolute: what is asat was never real, what is sat has never admitted of abhāva — and that sat is Brahman alone, the sole invariant witness behind every cognition.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Rāmānuja sets the verse on the axis of vināśitva (perishability) and avinśitva (imperishability): the deha (body), as acit (non-conscious matter), is by its very svarūpa (own nature) asat — it exists only to dissolve — while the ātman, as cit (conscious self), is by its svarūpa sat, incapable of abhāva. He anchors this with Parāśara's testimony from the Viṣṇu Purāṇa: 'sad-bhāva evaṃ bhavato mayokto jñānaṃ yathā satyam asatyam anyat' — existence is knowledge, all else is unreal. The tatt-darśins see the anta not as Śaṅkara's undivided sat but as a qualified distinction: body and soul share the same experiential field yet belong to categorically different orders of being, body falling within Bhagavān's body, ātman within Bhagavān's inner self.

• Madhvadvaita

  Madhva's terse bhāṣya multiplies the ontological players: asat here is not mere illusory appearance but a real causal substrate — prakṛti (primordial matter) and puruṣa (individual soul) are both nitya (eternal), as the Viṣṇu Purāṇa affirms: 'prakṛtiḥ puruṣaś caiva nityā kālaś ca sattama.' The abhāva of asat refers to the incapacity of any entity other than Hari to be independently sat: everything else, including the jīva, has bhāva only as a dependent and distinct reality contingent on Hari-sattā (Hari's being). The anta seen by the tattva-darśins is therefore plural and ordered — there is one independent sat (Brahman-as-Hari), and multiple dependent sats (jīvas, prakṛti) that would lapse into non-being if Hari withdrew his sustaining will.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha's Anukaraṇa-bhāṣya refuses to reduce the world to either sat or asat and instead reads the verse as Kṛṣṇa's active negation of both the asad-vāda (nihilist thesis, refuted by Chāndogya 6.2.2) and the blanket dissolution of phenomena: the body is 'neither utterable as sat (because it perishes) nor utterable as asat (because it is born),' and this undecidable ontological status is itself the sign that it belongs to the brahma-ananyatva (non-difference from Brahman) order — citing Viṣṇu Purāṇa: 'tad etad akṣayaṃ nityaṃ jaganmunivara.' What abides is śuddha-sattā (pure being), which is Kṛṣṇa's own saccidānanda-ātmaka (being-consciousness-bliss) nature; the deha-prapañca (bodily world) participates in that being precisely because it is his līlā-prasāda (grace through divine play), not despite its transience but through it.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Śrīdhara's voice is practical and devotionally warm: the verse answers the soldier's objection — 'heat and cold are intolerable; enduring them risks death' — by offering viveka (discrimination) as the instrument of titikṣā (forbearance). Śīta-uṣṇa (cold and heat) belong to the anātma-dharma (properties of the non-self) and thus have no real bhāva in the ātman; conversely, the ātman, whose svarūpa is sat (the nature of existence), admits no abhāva. The anta discerned by the tattva-darśins — the vāstu-yāthātmya-vids (those who know the truth of things) — is therefore a liberating practical conclusion: since neither the fluctuation has ultimate reality nor the experiencer can ultimately perish, the Pāṇḍava warrior can endure the field's hardships without existential terror.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusūdana's expansive bhāṣya constructs a three-axis test of asat: anything kāla-paricchinnam (temporally bounded — arises and perishes), deśa-paricchinnam (spatially bounded — limited to a region), or vastu-paricchinnam (essentially differentiated — bears sājātīya, vijātīya, svagata-bheda) is asat; the pure sat is free of all three pariccheda (delimitation). Against the Naiyāyika who would grant sat-hood to the universal sattā (generic being), Madhusūdana insists that sat is one svaprakāśa (self-luminous), vibhu (all-pervading) and anuvyāpta (all-pervading thread): 'sarvānusyūta-sanmātra' — it runs through every object as the invariant substrate of 'ghaṭaḥ san, paṭaḥ san.' The anta confirmed by śruti (Chāndogya: 'sad eva somya idam agra āsīt') is therefore non-dual: this asat-prapañca (unreal world) is superimposed on sat the way serpent is on rope, and bhakti — Kṛṣṇa as the personal face of that sat — is the very knowing that dissolves the superimposition.