Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 2, Verse 3: Krishna to Arjuna — Sāṅkhya-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Śaṅkarācārya passes in silence over this verse — his commentary opens only at 2.10, where Kṛṣṇa himself will speak. Yet the verse's logic fits the Advaita trajectory precisely: klaibya (unmanliness, loss of ojas) is a failure of viveka (discrimination), not of emotion, and Kṛṣṇa's imperative 'rise' points toward the self-knowledge that alone removes the root of grief. The Advaita reading therefore holds that no real command is issued here — only a diagnostic: this hṛdaya-daurbalya (weakness of heart) is itself the symptomatic face of avidyā (ignorance of the ātman), whose cure is not willpower but jñāna (knowledge).

  divergence: No direct bhāṣya by Śaṅkara on 2.3; rendering inferred from his commentary beginning at 2.10, where the Advaita framing of grief as avidyā is established. The diagnostic reading — grief as misidentification of ātman with body — governs the Advaita interpretation of all pre-2.10 exchanges.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Rāmānuja reads the Lord's rebuke as precise: the grief that arose in Arjuna's heart while he sat before the armies — kuto'yam asthāne samutthitaḥ śokaḥ, 'whence has this grief arisen in an improper place?' — is three-layered in its condemnation: it opposes welfare in the worlds beyond, it brings disgrace, and it is utterly petty (atikṣudram), nothing more than hṛdaya-daurbalya (heart-weakness). To rise for battle is therefore not mere worldly valor; abandoning this misplaced grief is the precondition for the kainkarya (service-action) that constitutes devotion to Bhagavān. The epithet Pārtha — 'son of Pṛthā' — reminds Arjuna that his very birth carried divine grace, making this klaibya (unmanliness) a contradiction of his own constituted nature.

  divergence: Rāmānuja supplies the fullest direct commentary of any school on this verse. His tri-layered condemnation of the grief — parama-loka opposition, dishonor, pettiness — is specific to Viśiṣṭādvaita's reading of action as service. Advaita would locate the failure in avidyā rather than in moral impropriety; Madhva would stress dependence on Hari's will; Rāmānuja locates it in Arjuna's deviation from svabhāva (constituted nature) as a devotee-warrior.

• Madhvadvaita

  Madhvācārya's commentary does not open until 2.11, yet the Dvaita reading of this verse is determined by its foundational tenet: the jīva (individual soul) is eternally and irrevocably distinct from and dependent on Hari, and every act — including the act of rising to fight — is acceptable only as worship in that asymmetric relationship. Klaibya here is not primarily cowardice but a failure of the jīva's constitutional posture: the deluded jīva is claiming an autonomy of grief that belongs to no finite being. Kṛṣṇa's imperative 'uttistha (rise)' is Hari's direct command to a servant, and Arjuna's compliance or non-compliance is itself a test of tattva-jñāna (knowledge of the five real distinctions), which Kṛṣṇa will provide only beginning at 2.11.

  divergence: No direct bhāṣya by Madhvācārya on 2.3; rendering inferred from Dvaita's governing principles and from Madhva's commentary opening at 2.11. The Dvaita emphasis on the jīva's dependent status distinguishes it sharply from Advaita (where the jīva-Brahman distinction is ultimately unreal) and from Viśiṣṭādvaita (where the jīva is a mode of Brahman).

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha comments on 2.2 and 2.3 together: the one who 'slays the honey of delusion' (mohama-dhu-hantā) speaks these words, and his first address to Arjuna is to his pure essential form — 'hे arjuna śuddha-svarūpa, O Arjuna of pure essence.' The question 'whence has this impurity (kaśmalam) come upon you in this moment of crisis (viṣame saṅkaṭe)?' is not merely moral reproof; in Śuddhādvaita it is Kṛṣṇa actively withdrawing the obscuring grace (māyā-prasāda) that temporarily veiled Arjuna's natural identity as a participant in Kṛṣṇa's own līlā (divine play). The command to rise is Kṛṣṇa inviting Arjuna back into the pravāha (current) of puṣṭi (divine nourishment) — the grief was real, but it was also Kṛṣṇa's instrument for initiating the teaching.

  divergence: Vallabha's commentary bundles 2.2–2.3 and addresses Arjuna's pure essential nature rather than his moral failure — a reading impossible in Dvaita (where the jīva is inherently finite-dependent) and in Advaita (where 'pure essence' would point away from individuality entirely). The kaśmala (impurity) is not ethical but ontological: a momentary occlusion of Arjuna's natural immersion in Kṛṣṇa's flow.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Śrīdhara Svāmī reads each epithet as a doing-word: 'Pārtha' — son of Pṛthā — signals that this klaibya (pusillanimity, cowardice) is out of character, because such behavior does not befit you (tvayy etan nopapadyate); 'Paraṃtapa' — you who burn the foe — signals that the capacity to rise is already constitutively yours, the very quality by which you are named. Hṛdaya-daurbalya (weakness of heart) is glossed as kātarya (timidity, faint-heartedness), described as kṣudra (petty, trivial), meaning it can be discarded like chaff; the imperative is yuddha-āya uttistha — rise for battle — where the compound makes clear that rising and fighting are not two acts but one orientation. The tone is balanced: neither the harsh dialectic of Śaṅkara nor the rapture of Vallabha, but a calm clarification of what the moment actually calls for.

  divergence: Śrīdhara's bhāṣya is the most syntactically careful of the four available here. His gloss of klaibya as kātarya (not merely physical unmanliness but the psychological condition of faint-heartedness) is distinctive and shapes his reading of the imperative as corrective naming rather than moral condemnation.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusūdana Sarasvatī names the condition with philosophical precision: klaibya is klība-bhāva (the state of being unmanned), defined as adhairya (lack of steadiness) specifically as the breaking of ojas, tejas, and similar powers — and Arjuna himself has confessed this exact symptom ('the bow slips from my hand, my mind whirls'). The epithet Pārtha carries argumentative weight: Pṛthā obtained her son by divine grace alone, and that grace-born son is constitutionally unfit for this klaibya — 'pṛthā-tanayatve klaibyāyogyam ityarthaḥ.' The epithet Paraṃtapa then carries the counter-weight: the man who is celebrated for having contested even Maheśvara (Śiva) in battle cannot consistently claim that steadiness is unavailable to him. What remains — the bhrama (mental whirling), the hṛdaya-daurbalya — Madhusūdana calls kṣudra in two senses simultaneously: trivially small and therefore easily removed by viveka (discrimination); 'tyaktvā vivekena apanīya, uttistha — having set it aside through discrimination, rise.'

  divergence: Madhusūdana's synthesis is visible in two moves absent from the other schools: first, the explicit enumeration of ojas and tejas as the powers under threat (Advaita's philosophical vocabulary applied to what Śrīdhara treats only as kātarya); second, the dual gloss of kṣudra — moral pettiness AND metaphysical thinness — which allows viveka (Advaita's instrument) to do the work that Vallabha would assign to puṣṭi-grace and Rāmānuja would assign to recognizing svabhāva.