Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the verse as a careful statement of incomparability and even of surpassing. The construction is taken as conditional: if such a thousand-sun radiance were to arise, it might be like the radiance of that great Self, and if it were not so, then the radiance of the universal form itself exceeds it. One commentator frames the verse as answering an objection, whether the Lord's excellent form has radiance at all, since a form without radiance would be like mere wood; the answer is that it does have radiance, and the 'if' is used as an un-supposed admission while another word secures certainty, so the sense is 'it is somehow similar, indeed it is so.' Another reads the hyperbole as a figure of unreal comparison built on the absence of any real comparable thing, a poetic surmise that makes plain in every way the very incomparability of the form.

Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri

Viśiṣṭādvaita

This school takes the verse to show the measurelessness of the splendour and reads it as a positive statement about the Lord's own nature: He is of the very form of undecaying, undiminishing splendour. The thousand-sun simile is understood as a measured approximation rather than an exhausting account: it fixes the right scale for the seeker, not one sun but a thousand and not gradually but all at once, while the actual brightness still exceeds the human power of comparison. The image gives the right order of magnitude without pretending to describe the splendour fully.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

These commentators press hardest that the count must not be taken literally. 'Thousand' is a name for the endless, and is used only to convey the idea, the way the valour of Rama, son of Dasharatha, is spoken of as comparable to that of Indra without a literal equation. They argue from scripture, citing supplementary Rigvedic hymns that call the Lord 'of endless power, of endless splendour, and beyond even that,' and reason that where the Gita's wording could be read in more than one way it is the weaker authority, while scripture, which admits no other reading, is the stronger and must govern the sense. The further ground is the great purport: scripture's whole aim is fixed on the Lord, so a statement of mere measure serves no purpose, and the Lord's radiance is to be understood as truly unlimited and distinct from the sun and all such things.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

Here the figure is named precisely as comparison-with-the-non-existent, and is used to declare the form's unlikeness to the world: the simile reaches for what has never been seen, the simultaneous rising of a thousand suns, because the thing to be likened cannot be matched from within the world's stock of seen things. One commentator carries this further into devotional weight, finding the key in the address 'great-souled one': the same one who carries this all-surpassing splendour is the very Krishna who in Vraja stood in a single human-shaped body. On this reading the thousand-sun figure is not a measure of how much of him is shown but a heightened cry that even at the limit of every worldly comparison, the form now thrown open exceeds what any comparison can carry, because it is the supreme Person, the limit beyond every measure.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

These commentators hear the simile as deliberately offered and then withdrawn, so that the devotee's mind is brought to the threshold of comparison and then sent past it. One says there is no other comparison at all, and hears the thousand suns named and then quietly set aside as not quite the same, so the bhakta is carried beyond comparison itself toward the one single radiance of Hari. Another treats it as a wondrous object of comparison, a poetic fancy that, being suggestive, suggests in every way the incomparability of that radiance. The Marathi commentator pours the image full: before this radiance even the world-destroying light of twelve suns in countless clusters grows pale, and only all the lightnings of the universe mixed with the world-consuming fire and tenfold heavenly light might come somewhat nearer, such is the transcendent glory of Shrihari that the seer beheld by the grace of Vyasa.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These voices keep close to the plain sense and unpack the basic terms. 'In the sky' is glossed as the mid-region, the antariksha, and 'great-souled one' as the great Soul or mighty Being, the Cosmic Form. The verse is rendered simply: if the effulgence of a thousand suns arose at once in the firmament, it would be somewhat like the brilliance of this great Self. One commentator develops the logic of incomparability with a ladder of lights: thousands of stars together cannot equal one moon, thousands of moons cannot equal one sun, and even thousands of suns cannot serve as the thing-to-be-likened to the radiance of the cosmic Lord. His reasoning is that the sun's light is material while the Lord's radiance is divine, and a material light, however vast, is paltry before a divine light because the two are altogether different kinds that cannot be measured against each other; so the material light of a thousand suns is used here only as a finger pointing toward the divine radiance, not as its true equal.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas