Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 7, Verse 4: Krishna to Arjuna — Jñāna-Vijñāna-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  The eight terms do not name gross substances — bhūmi (earth) and the rest indicate the five tanmātras (subtle sense-essences), not gross elements; manas names the ahaṅkāra that is its cause; buddhi names the mahat-tattva that is ahaṅkāra's cause; and ahaṅkāra itself names the avyakta (unmanifest) permeated by avidyā, as food permeated by poison is called poison. This avidyā-saturated avyakta is the root-cause called ahaṅkāra because it is the seed of all worldly movement — just as in the world one sees ahaṅkāra as the spring of every activity. Thus this entire field, however called eightfold, is the Lord's māyā-śakti — not an independent nature but Īśvara's own sovereign power differentiated for the purpose of manifestation.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  This variegated world — an inexhaustible arena of wondrous enjoyments, instruments of experience, and dwelling-places — rests upon a single originating nature that belongs to Me (Bhagavān), which must be understood as eightfold: the five great elements bearing their characteristic qualities from earth's fragrance upward through space, the group of the senses headed by manas, and the dual of mahat and ahaṅkāra. Knowing this prakṛti as 'Mine' (madīyā) means knowing it as the body (śarīra) of the Lord — non-separate from Him as a mode (prakāra) is non-separate from its substance, so that world-plurality is never a rival to divine unity but its very expression. This is the first step toward understanding how Bhagavān, possessing all existence as His body, is the material and efficient cause together.

• Madhvadvaita

  Madhvācārya's bhāṣya on this verse is terse — it offers a single technical claim: that the mahat-tattva is included within (absorbed into) the ahaṅkāra category (mahato 'haṅkāra evāntarbhāvaḥ). The verse fulfils the promise of knowledge already pledged; its enumeration of prakṛti's eight divisions demonstrates Hari's independent (svatantra) ownership of a finite created order that is categorically different from and eternally subordinate to Him. Even prakṛti — however vast — belongs to Hari as His instrument, never as a co-eternal reality; the jīvas who move within it are equally dependent, neither fusing with Hari nor acting without His sanction.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Kṛṣṇa teaches His own glory (svamahimā) here in accordance with Brahma-vāda: Brahman itself, by its own sovereign will (svecchayā), becomes everything — earth and milk are the śruti-examples cited in Brahma-Sūtra 1.4.26 — making Kṛṣṇa simultaneously the non-different material and efficient cause (abhinna-nimitta-upādāna-kāraṇa). The five gross elements and the three subtle realities — manas, buddhi, ahaṅkāra, which serve as the abodes of Aniruddha, Pradyumna, and Saṅkarṣaṇa respectively — constitute the eightfold form of this prakṛti, a presence always associated with consciousness (sat-aṃśa), capable of all action only when so conjoined. Citta is deliberately omitted because it is not properly prākṛta but Bhagavān's own nature glimpsed through the Bhāgavata lens; the eightfold nature is thus the ācit (insentient) pole of a world whose sentient pole is Kṛṣṇa Himself — a cosmos of pure prasāda, not alienated matter.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Śrīdhara offers two parallel readings: on the first, 'bhūmi' and the four remaining elemental terms name the five tanmātras (subtle essences), while manas names the ahaṅkāra that causes it, buddhi names the mahat-tattva that causes ahaṅkāra, and ahaṅkāra names avidyā as the root — giving an inverted Sāṅkhya stack folded into eight. On the second, the five elemental terms stand for the gross elements taken together with their subtle counterparts, ahaṅkāra stands for ahaṅkāra and its products (the sense-faculties), buddhi stands for mahat, and manas names the residual avyakta-prādhāna — a second valid mapping that also yields eight. The full twenty-four Sāṅkhya tattvas are always intended; they are declared as eight by folding: the same eightfold structure that chapter 13 will unfold as 'mahābhūtāny ahaṅkāro buddhir avyaktam eva ca / indriyāṇi daśaikaṃ ca pañca cendriyagocarāḥ.'

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusūdana reads the eight terms against the full Sāṅkhya twenty-four: the five elemental names (bhūmi through kha) point to the five tanmātras as the subtle states of the gross elements; buddhi and ahaṅkāra are used in their own primary senses (mahat and ahaṅkāra); manas, however, names the avyakta — the unmanifest — by a secondary signification forced by the need to exhaust all primary causes, because manas (the ordinary faculty of doubt and deliberation) is already subsumed under ahaṅkāra's products. In his own Advaita-siddānta buddhi and ahaṅkāra are māyā-transformations, while the tanmātras are the five elements before full pancīkaraṇa (quintuplication). This prakṛti — māyā named by Īśvara's power, of indescribable nature (anirvacanīya-svabhāvā) and three-stranded (triguṇātmikā) — encompasses the entire inert domain: a supremely useful map for the sādhaka who must dissolve attachment to its every fold before the recognition of Brahman can dawn.