Chapter 15 · Verse 13·Spoken by Arjuna
गामाविश्य च भूतानि धारयाम्यहमोजसा।पुष्णामि चौषधीः सर्वाः सोमो भूत्वा रसात्मकः
gām āviśhya cha bhūtāni dhārayāmy aham ojasā puṣhṇāmi chauṣhadhīḥ sarvāḥ somo bhūtvā rasātmakaḥ
Entering the earth, I sustain all beings by my power. Becoming Soma, the moon full of sap, I nourish every plant.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
he Lord is speaking, and here He names two of His sustaining powers in the world. First, He says He enters the earth (gam, the ground we walk on) and upholds all beings by His ojas, His strength or vital energy. The commentators are careful about what this strength is: it is power free of desire and passion, free of attachment and aversion, the Lord's own sovereign might. Beings here means the whole world of moving and unmoving things, everything that rests on the earth. So the verse is not poetry about a far-off God; it is a claim that the very stability of the ground beneath us is the Lord's energy at work.
Braided from 12 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrī Puruṣottama · Vallabhācārya · Swami Sivananda · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Ramsukhdas · Vedānta Deśika
Several commentators press the same vivid point to show why this matters: without the Lord's holding-power, the earth could not stay whole. They say the heavy earth would otherwise scatter like a fistful of dust, or crumble, or sink into the waters. It is the Lord's strength alone that keeps the earth firm, equal to a packed fistful, so it neither falls nor breaks apart. Some add the further marvel that even though water stands higher and covers more than dry land, the earth is not submerged; this too is the working of His sustaining power. The takeaway is that what looks like ordinary natural stability is a continuous act of divine support.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Swami Sivananda · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Ānandagiri
To back this up, the Advaita commentators anchor the verse in the Veda. They cite mantra-words such as 'by whom the fierce heaven and the firm earth are upheld' and 'He upheld the earth' (Taittiriya Samhita), reading them as describing the Lord Himself, who has become Hiranyagarbha, the cosmic first-born. The point of the citation is that scripture already credits the upholding of heaven and earth to the supreme; this verse simply says it again in the first person. One commentator adds that even the deities of heaven and earth have their firmness only in dependence on the Lord, since next to Him they are weak.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Ānandagiri
The verse then turns to a second power: the Lord says that, having become the soma, He nourishes all the plants. Soma is read as the moon, and rasatmaka means made of sap, of essence, of taste. The moon is treated as the storehouse of all savours or fluids; becoming it, the Lord pours His own sap into the herbs and makes them grow and turn sweet and nourishing. The plants named are the food crops, rice, barley, wheat and the rest. So the same Lord who holds the earth steady is also the life that climbs the stalk and ripens our food.
Braided from 13 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrī Puruṣottama · Vallabhācārya · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Ramsukhdas
Read together, the two halves give a single teaching: the Lord is the immanent, all-sustaining life of the world, present both in what holds creation up and in what feeds it. He is in the firmness of the ground and in the sap of the plant. Because both the holding-power and the nourishing-power are His and not the earth's or the moon's own, the verse becomes evidence that all things have their Self in Him; the natural order is His pervasion, working in every place we look.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Vallabhācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas · Vedānta Deśika
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read the verse as proof of the Lord's all-Self-hood: because the holding of the earth and the nourishing of plants are the Lord's powers and not the things' own, the Lord is the very Self of all. They tie the upholding to the Veda, identifying the supreme with Hiranyagarbha, the cosmic person who 'upheld the earth,' and they argue that the earth-deity and other deities have firmness only in dependence on Him, since next to Him they are weak. One of them also unpacks soma as juice-form and water-form, glossing rasa as water and joy.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
These commentators read the verse plainly as a statement that the Lord supports beings by His unobstructed power and becomes the soma, the moon-essence, to nourish the plants. They take it as extending the Lord's pervasion to the earth and to lunar nourishment, the world being the body He enters and sustains, without drawing the conclusion that the world is non-different from Him as one Self.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Śuddhādvaita
These commentators set this verse in a series: as in the sun, so also in the earth, the holding, nourishing and ripening powers are the Lord's portion. They distinguish the powers: the holding-power in the earth is light-formed, while becoming the deathless, sap-formed soma is the nourishing-power, by which He feeds the rasa of the very beings He upholds in earth-form. One notes that this nourishing is further unfolded in the account of how soma arises.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Modern
Ramsukhdas develops the verse with detailed natural-philosophy: the holding-power (dharana-shakti) seen in earth, and even gravitation, is the Lord's, not earth's own; the moon (chandra) has two powers, light-giving and nourishing, and this verse speaks of the nourishing. He distinguishes the bright fortnight, when the sap-natured moon showers nectar and plants and even the fetus grow, from the dark fortnight when it dries; and he insists 'soma' here means the moon-world (chandra-loka), not the visible disc, from which nectar reaches earth. Tilak separately weighs the word soma, noting it can mean both the soma creeper and the moon, and argues from the surrounding context that the moon is clearly meant here.
Swami Ramsukhdas · Lokmanya Tilak
A Seeker Asks
If the moon literally nourishes plants and holds nectar, how should a modern reader take this verse without dismissing it as outdated cosmology?
First, notice what the verse is actually claiming. Its central point is not a theory of lunar botany but that the holding-power in the earth and the nourishing-power that ripens food are the Lord's, not the things' own. Even the commentator most attentive to physical detail says plainly that the dharana-shakti seen in earth, and even gravitation, is the Lord's, and that the nourishing power in the plants is His working through the moon, not the moon's own.
Swami Ramsukhdas
Second, the commentators themselves treat the imagery as imagery to be weighed, not a literal-only creed. One carefully examines the word soma, observes that it can mean both the soma creeper and the moon, and decides from context which is meant; this is the work of a careful reader, not a naive one. So the tradition models reading the verse for its meaning rather than freezing it as a physics lesson.
Lokmanya Tilak
Third, taken at the level the verse intends, it remains exactly true: you are held up by a power you did not make, and you are fed by sap and savour you did not produce. The verse asks you to see that the stability of the world and the nourishment of life are a single divine presence, immanent in the ground and in the growing plant, so that ordinary natural support is recognized as the Lord's continuous care.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda
Contemplation
Let this verse change where you look for God. The teaching is not that the Lord lives somewhere far above the world, but that He has entered the very ground you stand on and the very sap that climbs the stalk of the plant. The firmness under your feet and the food on your plate are both His sustaining power at work, moment by moment. So the next time you feel the solid earth hold you, or you eat a grain of rice, you can meet it as His care reaching you directly, not as dead matter but as the immanent life that upholds and feeds all beings.
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