Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 13, Verse 26: Krishna to Arjuna — Kṣetra-Kṣetrajña-Vibhāga-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Whatever being comes to be, moving or unmoving, know, O best of the Bhāratas, that it arises from the saṃyoga (conjunction) of kṣetra (the field) and kṣetrajña (the field-knower). This saṃyoga (conjunction) is neither contact by joining parts, like a rope with a pot, since the kṣetrajña (field-knower) is partless like space, nor samavāya (inherence), like threads with cloth; it is the mutual adhyāsa (superimposition) of each one's properties onto the other, between object and subject of opposite nature, rooted in the lack of viveka (discrimination), like the snake on a rope or silver on mother-of-pearl, and so it is mithyā-jñāna (false knowledge). When one draws the kṣetrajña (field-knower) out of the field as a reed is drawn from muñja grass, sees it as Brahman free of all upādhi (limiting adjunct), and sees the field as a magic elephant, a dream, a city in the clouds, the false knowledge that causes birth departs.

  divergence: Śaṅkara (13.27) turns the verse into an inquiry into what kind of 'conjunction' is meant, and rules out both real relations admitted by the realist schools (saṃyoga as contact, samavāya as inherence). His answer is adhyāsa (superimposition), the core of Advaita: the conjunction is an error, so knowledge alone dissolves it.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  As far as being comes to birth in the form of the moving and the unmoving, so far it is born only from the mutual saṃyoga (conjunction) of kṣetra (the field) and kṣetrajña (the knower of the field). It is born conjoined, not with the two separated from each other.

  divergence: Rāmānuja (13.26) is terse: the stress falls on the inseparability of the two in every embodied being, and his transition sentence from 13.25 calls each being cid-acit-saṃsarga-ja (born of the union of the conscious and the non-conscious). There is no talk of superimposition or error; the conjunction is a real association of two real entities, the reverse of Śaṅkara's reading.

• Madhvadvaita

  With the words beginning 'yāvat' he again sets out the svarūpa (true nature) of prakṛti (matter), puruṣa (the individual soul) and Īśvara (the Lord), as possessed of attributes such as sāmya (sameness).

  divergence: Thin: Madhva's comment (his 13.27) is a single transition sentence and does not gloss saṃyoga at all. The one doctrinal mark it carries is a threefold count, prakṛti, puruṣa and Īśvara as three distinct realities, where the verse itself names only two (kṣetra and kṣetrajña). The rendering stays at what the sentence says.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Now, to show the way of discriminating the self that is mixed with prakṛti (matter), in the manner of Sāṅkhya, he says that every being (sattva), moving and unmoving, is born of the relation of kṣetra (field) and kṣetrajña (field-knower), as the Bhāgavata says: 'from the union of both, living beings arise like bubbles on water' (10.87.31). Here they are born of the mutual conjunction of field and self, as conjoined, not as separated from each other.

  divergence: Vallabha (13.27) reads this as a method of discrimination in the Sāṅkhya manner and grounds it in the Bhāgavata image of beings as bubbles in water, a real but passing union. Like Rāmānuja he insists the two are born together and never apart; unlike Śaṅkara there is no superimposition.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Since karma-yoga (discipline of action) was set out in chapters three to five, and dhyāna-yoga (discipline of meditation) in chapters six and eight, and since meditation takes as its object the self discerned through sāṅkhya (discrimination), he now expounds sāṅkhya (discrimination) itself until the chapter ends. Whatever thing at all comes to be, all of it arises from the yoga (joining) of kṣetra (field) and kṣetrajña (field-knower), that is, know that it comes from tādātmya-adhyāsa (superimposed identity) made by aviveka (non-discrimination).

  divergence: Śrīdhara (13.27) agrees with Śaṅkara that the 'joining' is superimposed identity born of non-discrimination, but gives no argument against rival relations. His distinctive move is architectural: he maps the whole Gītā (action in chapters 3-5, meditation in 6 and 8) and places this verse at the start of a sāṅkhya section running to the chapter's end.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Because saṃsāra (worldly becoming) is born of avidyā (ignorance), mokṣa (liberation) through vidyā (knowledge) is coherent; to fix this, saṃsāra and the knowledge that ends it are expounded to the chapter's end, explaining the earlier statement that attachment to the guṇa (qualities) causes birth. Kṣetra (field) is the whole seen world, inert, anirvacanīya (indeterminable as real or unreal), avidyā and its effects; kṣetrajña (field-knower) is its opposite, self-luminous, the ultimately real consciousness, unattached, indifferent, without attributes, without a second; their saṃyoga (conjunction) is a false tādātmya-adhyāsa (superimposed identity) produced by māyā (illusion) through failure to tell them apart, a pairing of the real and the unreal. Know, O best of the Bhāratas, that every product arises from that alone, and that saṃsāra (worldly becoming), resting on ignorance of one's own nature, is fit to perish by knowledge of that nature, as a dream does.

  divergence: Madhusūdana (13.27) takes Śaṅkara's adhyāsa reading and adds the later Advaita vocabulary: the field is anirvacanīya (indeterminable), and the conjunction is a satya-anṛta-mithunīkaraṇa (pairing of the real and the unreal), a phrase that echoes Śaṅkara's introduction on superimposition. He also states the soteriological conclusion outright: what ignorance produced, knowledge removes, as waking removes a dream.