Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 9, Verse 11: Krishna to Arjuna — Rāja-Vidyā-Rāja-Guhya-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Fools (mūḍha, those without viveka) disregard Me because they see only a human body (mānuṣī tanu) and miss the Supreme Reality (paraṃ bhāvam) — the ātman that is subtler than even ākāśa (space), the inner Self of all beings. Śaṅkara insists: the very ātman they inhabit IS what they fail to recognize in Me, making their contempt a wound they inflict on themselves. The great Īśvara of all bhūtas (bhūta-maheśvara) is not an external deity but their own Self — their avajñā (contempt) is therefore ignorance turned against its own ground.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Bhagavān — omniscient, true-of-resolve (satya-saṃkalpa), sole cause of all worlds, and supremely compassionate — assumed human form precisely so that every being could take refuge in Him; fools, blinded by their own accumulated pāpa-karma, mistake this act of boundless kāruṇya (compassion), audārya (generosity), sauśīlya (gracious condescension), and vātsalya (tenderness) for ordinary human birth. Rāmānuja's key word is sauśīlya: the Lord's willingness to associate with those far below His station is itself the paraṃ bhāvam (supreme mode) the mūḍhas cannot comprehend. Their contempt (tiraskāra) is thus a categorical failure to perceive divine grace as grace.

• Madhvadvaita

  The body Kṛṣṇa assumes merely appears human to the confused (mūḍhānāṃ mānuṣavat pratītāṃ tanum) — it is never actually a human body; Madhva grounds this in the Mokṣadharma citation: Nārāyaṇa the World-Creator is antaryāmin (inner controller) even within the five-element matrix, and His avatāra-forms — boar, man-lion, dwarf, human — were constituted at the first creation itself, not adopted later. The bhūta-maheśvara compound Madhva reads as 'He who is both the great Being (mahad bhūtam) and the Īśvara,' citing the Bāvhravya-śākhā of the Sāmaveda: beginningless, endless, supremely complete (anādy-anantaṃ paripūrṇa-rūpam). To mistake His form for ordinary humanity is not opinion but delusion born of severed relationship with Hari.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Kṛṣṇa's mānuṣī tanu is not a concession to finitude but the direct self-expression of ānanda-mātra (pure bliss) — His hands, feet, face, and belly are themselves ānanda, not inert matter; Vallabha insists there is no deha-dehī distinction in Kṛṣṇa's svarūpa, so the body IS the Self and the Self IS the body, a single undivided ānanda-svarūpa free from inert-matter qualities. The fools (āsurādaya) lack access not because Kṛṣṇa is hidden but because they cannot receive prasāda — the unmediated gift of His self-disclosure as the Puṣṭi-mārga requires. Their acintya-māhātmya (inconceivable greatness) blindness is thus a grace-deficit, not merely an intellectual error.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Śrīdhara's commentary is terse and structurally clear: the mūḍhas ignore Kṛṣṇa precisely because the body He takes at the bhaktas' wish (bhakta-icchā-vaśāt) is composed of pure sattva (śuddha-sattva-mayī) yet appears in human shape — the external human form conceals the paraṃ bhāvam, the sarva-bhūta-maheśvara reality within. NOTE: Śrīdhara's commentary here is notably brief; no elaboration on the nature of the error beyond this structural point is preserved in the panel payload.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusūdana holds both registers simultaneously: Kṛṣṇa is nitya-śuddha-buddha-mukta (eternally pure, aware, free) — ānanda-ghana (dense bliss), infinite, the ātman of all living beings — yet the mūḍhas, their inner instruments (antaḥkaraṇa) veiled by the delusion 'this is a mere man,' neither revere Him nor treat Him with the recognition He warrants as direct Īśvara. The bhrama (delusion) is double: they do not see the paramārthika tattva (ultimate reality) AND they miss the bhakty-anugraha (devotional grace) dimension that the human form was assumed to extend. Madhusūdana's synthesis: the ignorance of the jñāna-mārga and the ingratitude of the bhakti-mārga collapse into one failure — the covered antaḥkaraṇa that cannot receive the Lord's self-gift.