Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the verse closely and concretely as an exegesis of the previous announcement. They fix the traditional numbers (twelve Adityas, eight Vasus, eleven Rudras, two Ashvins, and the Maruts reckoned as forty-nine, that is seven troops of seven), and one maps the verse term by term onto the words of the earlier verse: 'many' unpacks 'by hundreds and thousands' and 'of many kinds,' the deity-names unpack 'divine,' and 'wonders' unpacks 'of various colours and shapes.' One notes the wonders include unprecedented shapes such as forms with four, five, or six faces. The accent falls on careful textual clarification: this verse simply spells out, item by item, what the announcement had stated in summary.

Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators stress that the named deity-groups are given only 'by way of indication.' The list is a doorway, not a boundary: through it Arjuna is to see everything visible to the eye and everything known through scripture, all of it, across all the worlds and all the scriptures, the many wonders never seen before. One underlines the orderly character of the vision: these are not isolated deities but the whole 'orderly cosmic company' shown within the one form. Both press the unprecedentedness hard, holding that even the gods themselves have not seen what Arjuna is now to see.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the deepest meaning of the wonder as the simultaneous co-presence of opposites. One holds that the marvel is mutually-opposed dharmas (contrary attributes and powers) brought together in one place without conflict, an impossible-seeming simultaneity that the cosmic form alone can carry. The other reframes the whole deity-list against inventory-thinking: the twelve, the eight, the eleven, the two, and the host of Maruts are not catalogued to tally up greatnesses, but because each is a class of beings ordinarily worshipped on its own, and here every such class is gathered as a single feature in the body of the one Purushottama (the Supreme Person). On this reading the old ranking of the gods is absorbed into the larger Krishna-ranking, and Arjuna's lineage-fitness is precisely the trained capacity to read that Krishna-ranking under every plural form.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Dvaita

This commentator widens the verse far beyond the deity-list into a sweeping vision: behold this very day the whole world, all that moves and is unmoving, standing together in one place within this body. What could not be seen in countless years of wandering here and there is now to be seen all at once, in one place, by the Lord's grace. And whatever else the Lord wishes to show is included: the support of the world, the very nature of the causal principles such as pradhana (primordial nature) and mahat (cosmic intelligence), together with the victories and defeats of one's own side and the like. (Note: this voice is here labeled with the Gaudiya Bhakti school in the source roster, though its reading sits naturally among the bhakti commentators.)

Śrīla Baladeva

Bhakti

These commentators let the catalogue do its own work and dwell on the marvel of the seeing rather than parsing the count. One says simply that what was elsewhere named is now to be seen all at once and in one place, full of more-than-ordinary marvel. The other unfolds the vision in vivid devotional poetry: from the merest blink of the Lord's eye whole creations of brilliant suns unfold and vanish; a hot breath brings forth the Vasus wrapped in flame; the frown of knit eyebrows looses bands of terrific Rudras; tender mercy on His face gives birth to the life-giving Ashvins; and from His ears stream all the winds. Whole races of gods spring from the mere sport of a single Divine Presence; the very Vedas can only babble poetry of these, and the creator himself is baffled in fathoming their depths, so that Arjuna now sees with his eyes what the three Vedas could not even hear of.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators ground the deity-list in its Vedic and scriptural background. One simply notes that the Adityas, Vasus, Rudras, and Maruts were already described in the previous chapter, and that the verse adds 'many other wonders' beyond them. One supplies the textual scholarship: these are Vedic deities, and the Mahabharata gives an alternate, more specific cosmic-form vision (shown to Narada) placing the twelve Suns on the left, the eight Vasus in front, the eleven Rudras on the right, and the Ashvins at the back, a description not accepted everywhere; the same epic even sorts these deities into varna-classes. The third gives the fullest enumeration: he names all twelve Adityas, eight Vasus, and eleven Rudras from the Mahabharata and Harivamsha, identifies the two Ashvins as the physicians of the gods, and explains that the twelve Adityas, eight Vasus, eleven Rudras, and two Ashvins make up the thirty-three principal devatas, while the forty-nine Maruts are reckoned apart from these thirty-three (which is why the verse adds the word 'tatha,' 'also,' and lists them separately), since the Maruts rose into godhood from an earlier asura condition.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas