Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 13, Verse 1: Krishna to Arjuna — Kṣetra-Kṣetrajña-Vibhāga-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  This body, O Kaunteya, is called kṣetra (field): because it wastes, decays and perishes, or because the fruit of action is harvested in it as in a field. Whoever makes it an object of his knowing, from the soles of the feet to the crown, by native knowing or by instruction, and discerns it part by part, him the knowers of the two call kṣetrajña (knower of the field). Is field and knower known by this much alone? No; what more is to be known is now taught.

  divergence: Śaṅkara (his 13.2) gives a fourfold etymology of kṣetra (kṣata-trāṇa, kṣaya, kṣaraṇa, field-like ripening of karma-phala) and defines the kṣetrajña purely as the one who objectifies the body, by svābhāvika or aupadeśika knowing. He closes by saying this naming is not yet sufficient knowledge, so the identity of this knower with the Lord is held back for the next verse. Unlike Śrīdhara and Madhusūdana he does not read 'vetti' as the I-and-mine of the bound self.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  This body, which a man speaks of in one breath with himself ('I am a god, I am a man, I am stout, I am lean'), is still other than the self who enjoys, and those who know the body truly call it the kṣetra (field) of that self's bhoga (experience); he who knows it, limb by limb and as a whole, as 'this I know' is, by being the knower, other than the known, and the knowers of the self call him kṣetrajña. We rightly say 'I am a man' only because the body exists solely as the self's viśeṣaṇa (mode), inseparable from it (apṛthak-siddhi), as cowness is from the cow. The knower's own form is not reached by the eye but by a mind refined in yoga; the deluded, standing near prakṛti (matter), see the knower in prakṛti's shape, as I shall say in 15.10.

  divergence: Rāmānuja (his 13.1) builds the verse around sāmānādhikaraṇya (co-ordinate predication): 'I am a man' is true, but only because the body is an inseparable mode (viśeṣaṇa, apṛthak-siddhi) of the self, not because body and self are one. Self and body are each arthāntara (a distinct entity), knower and known, like a pot and its seer. This sets up his reading of 13.2, where field and knower are both modes of Bhagavān; no other school here uses the mode-grammar.

• Madhva · Jayatīrthadvaita

  Homage to the giver of knowledge: in this chapter the Lord gathers into one place what was taught scattered, the jñāna (means to knowledge) set out through the end of the sixth chapter, the jñeya (the knowable, the nature of Brahman) set out in the six chapters from the seventh, the kṣetra (field) set out at 7.4, and the difference of puruṣa (persons) set out at 2.12, and having gathered them He sets each apart so that the topics stay unmixed. So He begins: this body, Kaunteya, is called kṣetra, and the one who knows it, those who know these matters call kṣetrajña (knower of the field).

  divergence: Read with Jayatīrtha's Prameyadīpikā on Madhva's bhāṣya (their 13.2): Madhva supplies only a salutation and a one-line statement of method: the chapter gathers (piṇḍīkṛtya) and then separates (viviktya) four topics taught earlier. Jayatīrtha supplies the content of that line: he locates each topic in the earlier chapters, and identifies the puruṣa (person) topic as puruṣa-bheda (the difference of persons) taught at 2.12, so the chapter is framed from its first verse as restating difference, not as moving toward identity. The rest of his note is grammatical and expository: the absolutive in piṇḍīkṛtya is figurative (gauṇa), meaning 'for the sake of gathering', and viviktya is added because gathering alone would mix the topics and defeat understanding, so it means keeping each topic pure (prakaraṇa-śuddhi). Neither commentator glosses kṣetra, kṣetrajña or tad-vidaḥ, so the verse itself is rendered literally and no Dvaita doctrine of the body is claimed for it. Where Advaita and Advaita-bhakti point this hexad toward the knower being the one non-dual self, and Viśiṣṭādvaita reads the body as a mode of the self, the Dvaita frame here is structural: gather what was scattered, then keep it distinct, with the plurality of persons named as one of the things kept distinct.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  This body, a transformation of the prakṛti already called not-self (anātman), is named kṣetra (field) because it is the dwelling of the puruṣa, as is the great cosmos, so is the small body. So long as the puruṣa does not know it as distinct he is only kṣetrin (holder of the field) and remains in saṃsāra (the round of birth and death); whoever knows the field apart, and himself as its seer, him the knowers call kṣetrajña (knower of the field). Even in saṃsāra there is some knowing of field and knower, but blurred into one; this separateness belongs to the one who knows himself as kṣetrajña, not to all.

  divergence: Vallabha (his 13.2) splits two statuses: kṣetrin, the mere occupant who is bound, and kṣetrajña, a title earned by distinct knowing. He rejects the extra opening verse ('prakṛtiṃ puruṣaṃ caiva') that some editions add, calling it unused by all and the whole hexad an elaboration of chapter 7. Several phrases (sāmānādhikaraṇya, ātma-viśeṣaṇataika-svabhāvatayā tad-apṛthak-siddheḥ, the pot-and-seer example) are taken almost word for word from Rāmānuja; the supplied text also seems to swap para and apara prakṛti (field as para), which looks like a transmission error and is not built on here.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  I promised to lift my devotees out of the sea of death and saṃsāra (rebirth), and that cannot happen without knowledge of the self; so now I teach the discrimination of prakṛti (nature) and puruṣa (person), the two natures, lower and higher, named in the seventh chapter. This body, the bhogāyatana (house of experience), is called kṣetra (field) because it is the ground where saṃsāra sprouts; he who 'knows' it, that is, takes it as 'I' and 'mine', is called kṣetrajña, because like a farmer he eats its harvest. So say the tad-vidaḥ, those who know how field and knower are told apart.

  divergence: Śrīdhara (his 13.2) places the whole chapter under the devotional promise of 12.7 ('I am their uplifter'): knowledge serves rescue. His decisive move is reading 'vetti' as abhimāna, 'I and mine', so the kṣetrajña of this verse is the bound jīva, a farmer eating the crop of karma. That is opposite to Vallabha, for whom kṣetrajña is the title of the one who has separated himself.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  This body with its senses and inner organ, O Kaunteya, is called kṣetra (field), for in it the fruit of action ripens again and again like grain; whoever takes it as 'I' and 'mine' is called kṣetrajña (knower of the field), a farmer eating his own harvest. Mark the grammar: the field is named in the passive, as object, because it is inert, while 'kṣetrajña' stands with 'iti' and not as an object at all, because it is svaprakāśa (self-luminous); anyone may name the field, but only the vivekin (discerning) name its knower. This whole last hexad serves the meaning of the great sentence: that the kṣetrajña, one and changeless in every field, is not other than the non-dual paramātman (supreme self).

  divergence: Madhusūdana (his 13.2) opens with his own verse: let the yogī (meditator) see the attributeless light if he can; for us, let the blue radiance running on Kālindī's bank delight the eyes. He then frames chapters 13-18 as the vākyārtha (sentence-meaning, the jīva-brahman identity) after the tvam and tat hexads, takes Śrīdhara's farmer gloss, and adds a grammatical argument found nowhere else here: the knower is never put in the accusative because it can never be an object.