Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 2, Verse 6: Krishna to Arjuna — Sāṅkhya-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  We do not even know which of the two outcomes — our conquering them or their conquering us — would be the lesser evil, since both paths lead deeper into the web of kartṛtva (doership) that perpetuates saṃsāra. The men standing arrayed before us, the Dhārtarāṣṭras with Bhīṣma and Droṇa at their head, are precisely those whose death we could not survive with any purpose intact — to kill them for a kingdom is to destroy the only context in which the kingdom meant anything. Arjuna's paralysis here is not weakness but the first honest recognition that no action undertaken from ahaṃkāra (the false 'I') can produce the good he is seeking.

  divergence: Śaṅkara begins his bhāṣya at 2.10; the Advaita reading of 2.6 is derived from his framing of the entire first chapter as demonstrating that mithyājñāna (false knowledge) about the self is the root cause of Arjuna's grief and confusion.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Having reasoned that being slain by the Dhārtarāṣṭras — who do not know the boundary between dharma and adharma — would still be better than winning a victory stained with unrighteousness, Arjuna sees that neither outcome offers him a clear path. Those standing before him are the very persons for whom he would not wish to live, and so even survival-through-victory collapses into a form of defeat. Having expressed all this, he becomes utterly destitute of his own counsel and falls at the feet of Bhagavān as a śaraṇāgata (one who has sought refuge), asking: 'Tell me what is genuinely good for me — I am your disciple.'

  divergence: Rāmānuja: 'yuddham ārabhy nivṛttavyāpārān bhavato dhārtarāṣṭrāḥ prasahya hanyuḥ… adharmy-āt asmākaṃ dharmaṃ-adharmaṃ ajānadbhiḥ taiḥ hananam eva garīyaḥ iti' — being killed by those ignorant of dharma is better than the adharmic victory; Arjuna then surrenders as śiṣya seeking śreyas.

• Madhvadvaita

  *Na caitad vidmaḥ* — Arjuna confesses that he does not know which is greater (*garīyas*): victory or defeat, life or death in this war. In Dvaita's reading, the confession is not rhetorical. The *jīva* is *paratantra* (eternally dependent), and that dependence is nowhere more naked than in the moment when even the most basic calculation of good and harm collapses. Arjuna cannot weigh the outcomes because no *paratantra* being possesses *svatantra* (the independently real, self-sufficient) discernment; correct knowledge of what is truly *garīyas* belongs to Hari alone, the one *svatantra* reality. The Dhārtarāṣṭras arrayed before him — *te 'vasthitāḥ pramukhe* — intensify the deadlock: those whose deaths he cannot will are the very men he must face. *Yān eva hatvā na jijīviṣāmaḥ* names the sharpest edge of *paratantra* existence — the *jīva* finds itself bound by loves and griefs it did not author and cannot dissolve by its own reckoning. The five-fold real distinction (*pañca-bheda*) is not suspended by Arjuna's anguish; the *bheda* between Lord and *jīva* is precisely why the *jīva*'s confusion requires the Lord's instruction. Arjuna's admission of not-knowing is the threshold at which *taratamya* (graded ontological hierarchy) becomes existentially felt: the dependent self, unable to determine its own course, stands ready — however unwillingly — to receive the *svatantra* Hari's directive.

  divergence: Madhva did not comment on this śloka directly (commentary begins at 2.11); the Dvaita rendering derives from his consistent doctrinal insistence on jīva-Brahman-bheda (eternal distinction) and dependent-worship of Hari as the only resolution of moral deadlock.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  The question Arjuna poses across three verses — 'we do not know which is better' — is, in the Puṣṭi-mārga reading, not primarily a problem of ethics or strategy but the exhaustion of the self-reliant will before the mystery of Kṛṣṇa's līlā (divine play). Arjuna cannot solve this because it is not solvable by his intelligence — the entire situation, including the Dhārtarāṣṭras standing before him, belongs to the Lord's design, and the only right response to that design is prasāda (the grace one receives by letting go of the calculation). His confusion is itself the prasāda beginning to work.

  divergence: Vallabha's comment is terse: 'na caitad iti praśnas tribhiḥ, spaṣṭārthaḥ' — the question spans three verses and is clear in its literal meaning; the Śuddhādvaita reading reads Arjuna's surrender-through-confusion as the doorway to Kṛṣṇa's grace.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Śrīdhara reads the verse as Arjuna naming two distinct uncertainties in sequence: first, he does not know which of the two outcomes — 'we defeat them' or 'they defeat us' — would be the lesser harm to his dharma; second, and more devastatingly, even if victory were achieved, it would resolve into defeat, because the people he would have to kill to obtain it are precisely those without whom he does not wish to continue living. The men standing before him — 'yān eva hatvā na jijīviṣāmaḥ te avasthitāḥ pramukhe' — are not enemies in any ordinary sense; they are the precondition for a life worth living, and removing them removes the meaning of any prize their removal might win.

  divergence: Śrīdhara: 'yān bandhūn hatvā jīvitum api vayaṃ necchāmaḥ… jāto'pi jayo naḥ phalataḥ parājaya eva' — even a victory gained by killing them is effectively a defeat, because the very people killed are those for whom one would not wish to survive.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusūdana reads this verse as the pivot-point at which Arjuna's crisis graduates from emotional grief to philosophical deadlock: he cannot determine whether the begging-life (bhikṣā) — which avoids violence but violates his kṣatriya-svadharma — is better, or battle is, and the uncertainty is genuine on both sides. Even if battle were chosen and won, the victory would taste as defeat: 'those by killing whom we do not wish to live are the very ones standing before us' — Bhīṣma, Droṇa and all the Dhārtarāṣṭra-kin. Madhusūdana then reads back through Chapter 1 and sees that every element of Arjuna's crisis — disgust at the body-identified world, detachment from earthly and heavenly fruits, a nascent sense of an 'I' beyond the ego — is itself the preparation for the sannyāsa-teaching that alone can resolve what no battle-calculus can.

  divergence: Madhusūdana: 'bhaikṣa-yuddhayor madhye kataran no garīyaḥ… jāto'pi jayo naḥ phalataḥ parājaya eva yato yān bandhūn hatvā jīvitum api vayaṃ necchāmaḥ' — the deadlock between begging and battle; and the retrospective reading of Chapter 1 as the sowing of sannyāsa-adhikāra.