Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 2, Verse 21: Krishna to Arjuna — Sāṅkhya-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Śaṅkara frames the verse as a rhetorical refutation (ākṣepa) rather than a question: 'kathaṃ sa puruṣaḥ' (how can that person) means 'in no way whatsoever does that person,' because the vidvān (knower) who has realized ātman as avikriya (utterly changeless) is himself that ātman — and an avikriya entity has no kartṛtva (agency) or bhoktṛtva (experiencer-hood) through which action could arise. The logic is structural: action requires vikāra (modification), vikāra requires a vikārī (a modifiable substrate), but the ātman is ajaṃ avyayam (unborn, without diminution), which means the vidvān does not merely refrain from slaying — the very capacity to slay or cause slaying has no purchase. Śaṅkara closes with the double-path corollary: precisely because the jñānin's sarva-karma-sannyāsa (renunciation of all action) is the only coherent outcome, karma-yoga is prescribed for the avidvān (non-knower) who still identifies himself as kartā (doer), and the Gītā's two niṣṭhās (the jñāna-yoga path for the sāṃkhya and the karma-yoga path for the yogin) rest on this asymmetry.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Rāmānuja reads the verse as completing the consolation begun in the preceding verses: the one who truly knows this ātman as nitya (eternal), avināśin (indestructible), and aja (unborn) across all bodies — whether deva (divine), manuṣya (human), tiryak (animal), or sthāvara (plant) — recognizes that what grief calls 'slaying' is at most śarīra-viśleṣa-mātra (mere body-separation), never ātman-dissolution. Yet Rāmānuja adds a humanizing qualification absent from Śaṅkara: even for the knower, the loss of a rāmaṇīya (beautiful, pleasure-bearing) body is a legitimate occasion for śoka-nimitta (grief-occasion), because bodies are Bhagavān's śarīra (the Lord's own body) and their dissolution is a real event within his qualified whole. The verse thus prescribes knowledge not as the abolition of grief but as the correction of its ontological misattribution — sorrow belongs to the temporary bodily frame, not to the ātman that passes through bodies as through garments worn by Bhagavān himself.

• Madhvadvaita

  Madhva's terse bhāṣya drives two interleaved negations of the ātman's vināśa (destruction): avināśin is glossed as naimitika-vināśa-rahita (free from occasioned or incidental destruction), and nitya as svābhāvika-nāśa-rahita (free from natural or intrinsic destruction) — a precise two-tier proof that neither external force nor internal decay can touch the jīva (individual soul). He then supplies an alternative parsing: avināśin = doṣa-yoga-rahita (free from the admixture of defects), and nitya = sadā-bhāvin (always existent) — which shifts the register from ontology of destruction to ontology of purity, reflecting Madhva's insistence that the jīva is eternally distinct from and dependent on Hari yet real, not reducible to māyā. The rhetorical question 'kaṃ ghātayati hanti kam' (whom does he cause to slay, whom does he slay) is answered by the internal logic: one who knows this ātman as genuinely real, genuinely indestructible, and genuinely pure cannot coherently attribute the agency of killing to it — not because ātman is Brahman, but because it is Hari's dependent reality whose killing is logically impossible.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha frames the verse as announcing the fruit (phala) of nirvikāra-ātma-jñāna (knowledge of the changeless ātman): to know the ātman as avināśin (indestructible) and aja (unborn) is not merely a metaphysical discovery but a transformative event that dissolves the knower's identification as both karma-kartā (agent of action) and prayojaka (the one who causes another to act). The negation 'katham' (how) operates as a prakāra-niṣedha (denial of mode): there is no mode or manner in which such a knower can slay or cause slaying, because the very machinery of agency — vikāra (modification), icchā (desire for result), bhoktṛtva (experiencer-hood) — has been consumed by the fire of this knowledge. In Vallabha's Puṣṭi-mārga register, this knowledge itself is Kṛṣṇa's prasāda (grace), not the knower's achievement — the ātman's indestructibility is Kṛṣṇa's own śuddha-sattā (pure being) flowing through the jīva, and the dissolution of the agent is the moment the jīva's will merges back into Kṛṣṇa's līlā (divine play).

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Śrīdhara opens by explicitly linking this verse to the hantṛtva-abhāva (absence of killer-hood) announced two verses earlier: he reads 'vedet' (let him know) as establishing the logical precondition — only the one who knows the ātman as nitya (free from growth), avyaya (free from diminution), aja (unborn), and avināśin (indestructible) is entitled to the conclusion that no means (sādhana-abhāva) for slaying such an entity exists. The practical inversion he draws is devotionally pointed: since Arjuna has been treating Kṛṣṇa as the prayojaka (instigator of the killing), the verse implicitly says 'do not see doṣa (fault) even in Me (Kṛṣṇa) as the one who causes action' — knowledge of ātman's indestructibility clears not only the sorrow over the slain but the guilt assigned to Kṛṣṇa as the one who prompted the battle. The bhakta's conclusion is that Kṛṣṇa, far from being a moral accomplice in violence, is the very knowledge that dissolves both the act and the one who would judge it.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusūdana structures the verse as the second half of a two-verse argument: BG 2.20 established 'na hanyate' (it is not slain), and BG 2.21 now establishes 'na hanti' (it does not slay) — the upasaṃhāra (summary conclusion) of the entire pratijna (thesis) that ātman is neither killer nor killed. His identification of the ātman is philosophically dense: avināśin = abādhya, that which cannot be sublated — sātyam (real in the ultimate sense); nitya = sarva-vyāpaka (all-pervading); aja = ādi-vikāra-rahita (free from the first modification, birth); avyaya = avayava-apacaya-rahita (free from diminution of parts or qualities) — any one of these properties logically entails the others. For Arjuna's specific predicament, Madhusūdana identifies the precise error: Arjuna superimposed kartṛtva (doer-hood) on himself and kārayitṛtva (causer-hood) on Kṛṣṇa, and then feared the resulting doṣa (moral taint) for both — the verse sweeps away both superimpositions at once, freeing Arjuna's bhakti from the dream-logic of avidyā (ignorance) that had made him both the killer and the one who blamed the Beloved for instigating the killing.