Advaita Vedānta

These commentators take 'brahma-sutra-padaih' not as the later aphoristic treatise of Badarayana but as Brahman-indicating words and sentences of the Upanishads themselves. On this reading a 'brahma-sutra' is a sentence that 'threads forth' or points to Brahman; the term is glossed as 'that by which Brahman is reached, gone to, known.' Two kinds of such pointing are distinguished: sentences that indicate Brahman indirectly by an incidental mark (the secondary or tatastha mark, such as 'that from which these beings are born'), and words that state Brahman's own nature directly (the essential or svarupa mark, such as 'Brahman is the real, knowledge, the endless'). A favored example of a Brahman-disclosing instruction is 'let one worship It as the Self.' One of these voices also offers an alternative on which the 'padas' may indeed be Badarayana's sutras such as 'now therefore the inquiry into Brahman,' decided in meaning by aphorisms like 'because of seeing' and 'made of bliss, from repetition.'

Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrīdhara Svāmī

Dvaita

These commentators insist that 'brahma-sutra-pada' means the Shariraka, that is, Badarayana's Brahma-sutra treatise in its conventional, established sense, and nothing more figurative. They argue directly against reading it as merely 'sentences indicative of Brahman': if that loose sense were taken, then since the Vedic chants and the utterances of the seers are also of that same Brahman-indicating character, the verse's separate mentions of 'by the seers' and 'by the metres' would become pointless repetition. To keep all three named sources distinct and meaningful, the third must be the specific aphoristic work, taken in its ordinary conventional sense.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Bhakti

These commentators read the verse with an additional devotional and meditative coloring. The seers sang the kshetrajna 'under many heads' because so wide a matter cannot be fastened in a single figure; the Vedic singing of it is tied to the forms of meditation and concentration, under the Vairaja form and under the various sacrificial-deity forms. One of these voices credits the Brahma-sutra padas specifically to Vyasa, as carrying the gathered substance of the Vedanta and reaching their proper settlement, citing 'but that, because of agreement (of texts).' The stress falls on the teaching as something to be assimilated and meditatively realized, then drawn together by the Lord into a single sap.

Vallabhācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī

Śuddhādvaita

This commentator frames the verse as removing a specific bewilderment: because the matter has been spoken in many ways by many different authorities, confusion arises, so the Lord now sets it out at length himself. The seers sang it by setting forth the fruit that arises from their own direct experience (anubhava). The Vedas sang it in their manifold forms of action, knowledge, worship, and desire-prompted rite, separately, to suit the diverse qualifications of seekers. The Brahma-sutra words are glossed as those by which Brahman is 'made into sutras,' and a second class as words by which Brahman is reached, with the whole stress on this being sung 'in accordance with sruti alone' and 'without doubt' because expounded from direct experience.

Śrī Puruṣottama

Modern

This commentator reads the three sources expansively and practically. The seers include the drashtas of the Vedic mantras and the composers of the shastras, smritis, and puranas, who described the field and the field-knower at great length using paired contrasts such as inert-and-conscious, real-and-unreal, body-and-embodied, eternal-and-non-eternal. The 'various metres' are taken to cover the mantras of all four Vedas in their samhita and brahmana parts, together with the Upanishads and the various branches. The closing intention drawn out is pastoral: the Lord seems to be telling the seeker that whoever wishes to study at length what is here put in brief may turn to these very texts.

Swami Ramsukhdas