Chapter 16 · Verse 14·Spoken by Krishna
असौ मया हतः शत्रुर्हनिष्ये चापरानपि।ईश्वरोऽहमहं भोगी सिद्धोऽहं बलवान्सुखी
asau mayā hataḥ śhatrur haniṣhye chāparān api īśhvaro ’ham ahaṁ bhogī siddho ’haṁ balavān sukhī
"That enemy I have slain, and I will slay the others too. I am the lord. I am the enjoyer. I am accomplished, powerful, and happy."
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
Audio from the Gītā Supersite, IIT Kanpur
Synthesis · a glossed leaf
machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
his verse is not Krishna speaking for himself. It is Krishna quoting the inner monologue of the asura, the person of demonic temperament, letting us overhear the thoughts that run through such a mind. The boast has two halves that the commentators trace to two different roots. The killing-talk ('that enemy has been slain by me, and I shall slay the others too') springs from anger; it follows directly on the verses about greed and now exposes the rage hidden inside that greed. The self-glorifying titles that follow ('I am the lord, the enjoyer, the perfected, the powerful, the happy') express the pride and self-deification of the same mind. Reading the verse, then, means watching a single deluded self congratulate itself, first on its victims and then on its supposed greatness.
Braided from 7 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda · Sant Jñāneśvar · Vedānta Deśika
The killing-half is not a single revenge but an open-ended program of violence. The asura reasons that because one hard-to-conquer enemy is already dead, the rest will fall easily and without effort; no one who opposes him, no one who 'plots his ruin,' will be left to live near him. Several commentators add that the killing is not even the whole of it: the asura means to seize the dead enemies' wives, wealth, and goods as well, so that the boast is at once murderous and acquisitive. The mind here treats other people simply as obstacles to be removed or property to be taken.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Swami Ramsukhdas · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Śrī Puruṣottama
The string of titles is the asura crowning himself. 'Lord' (ishvara) means he takes himself to be sovereign, his own master and the ruler of others, capable of subduing all; 'enjoyer' (bhogi) that he possesses every means of pleasure, women, mansions, vehicles, the apparatus of indulgence; 'perfected' or 'accomplished' (siddha) that his work is done, that he is complete, often glossed as having sons, grandsons, servants, and helpers around him; 'powerful' (balavan) that he is mighty and vigorous, able to crush any rival; and 'happy' (sukhi) that he is content and, as several note, free of disease, lacking nothing. The titles climb toward a single claim: that there is no one anywhere equal to him, that even Indra would look small beside him.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
The deep fault the verse diagnoses is the asura appropriating to himself a status that is not his. Across the schools the same charge recurs: each of these honorifics, ishvara, bhokta, siddha, balavan, sukhi, properly belongs to a higher referent, and the asura tears it loose and pins it on his own small self. Some name this 'self-deification' and call 'I am the Lord' the climactic, deepest fault of the demonic mind, the usurpation of the place that belongs to the Lord alone. The verse, on this shared reading, is less a list of crimes than a portrait of the one root crime: a self that mistakes itself for the center and the source of everything.
Vedānta Deśika · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Vallabhācārya · Rāmānujācārya
Divergence
Viśiṣṭādvaita
On this reading the verse's sharpest edge is the asura's denial that anything beyond his own self causes his success. He insists he is enjoyer, accomplished, powerful, and happy entirely 'of himself,' not by the unseen, that is, not by adrishta, the stored fruit of past karma, and not by any higher cause. He scorns the very 'apparatus of the unseen' as a crutch 'devised by the weak and the dull-witted,' a prop for those too feeble to act on their own. This school reads the boast as the precise inversion of the truth that the Lord is the inner ruler and real ground of all one has; the deepest asura-fault is exactly this usurpation, the candidate seizing for himself the title that belongs only to the Lord.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Śuddhādvaita
Here the asura's error is rooted in ajnana, ignorance, specifically the failure to grasp non-difference and the contrary working of bhagavad-iccha, the divine will. Deluded, he says 'I am ishvara, I shall rejoice,' not knowing that the only true ishvara is the inner regulator (antaryamin) who governs time and all else. On this view each stolen honorific, ishvara, bhokta, karta, siddha, balavan, sukhi, is a real Sanskrit dignity stripped of its true referent and fastened on the false self; and the teacher deliberately lets the proud words stand in their full dignity so that the offense of their misapplication becomes visible.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhakti
This reading isolates one load-bearing word, siddha, glossed as krta-krtya, 'one whose work is done,' and turns it into the heart of the verse. The asura tells himself, in the privacy of his own court, that he is already krta-krtya, complete and finished, the very status that in truth belongs only to the one bound to the divine nature who has known the tattva, the reality. The poignancy is that he claims at the verse's depth exactly the fulfillment he can never reach, because it is the reward of the opposite, daivi, temperament.
Śrīdhara Svāmī
Bhakti
Jnaneshwar dramatizes the boast into a swelling fantasy of conquest. The asura sneers that he has killed only a few enemies so far and will kill many more, until his fame alone resounds through the world; he will spare only those who become his servants and then crown himself God of the entire universe and king of this earth of enjoyment, the home of all pleasures, before whom even Indra looks insignificant. He cannot imagine any plan of his, in thought, word, or deed, going unfulfilled, or any command of his disobeyed; even Death (the destructor) may strut as powerful only until it has seen his prowess. This school renders the verse as a runaway daydream of total domination.
Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
Ramsukhdas reads the verse as the mind of one possessed by krodha (anger) weaving manorathas, idle wish-castles, and he adds a psychological diagnosis the older glosses leave implicit. Such persons, he says, broadcast only their victories and hide their defeats so as never to seem weak; and beneath the thundering boast they are in fact inwardly eaten by jalan, a burning envy and resentment. He also voices the asura's contempt for the spiritual path: those who turn to bhajan, remembrance, japa, and meditation are dismissed as deceived fools, while the asura fancies he holds every siddhi, anima, garima and the rest, in his grasp. The outward roar and the inward fire are, on his reading, one and the same disease.
Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If wanting to be capable, secure, and happy is so natural, where exactly does ordinary ambition end and this demonic self-deification begin?
The line is not in wanting capability or happiness but in the word the asura keeps repeating: 'of myself.' He insists he is enjoyer, accomplished, powerful, and happy entirely by his own self, owing nothing to any higher cause; he even mocks the idea that the unseen fruit of past action or any power beyond him plays a part, calling such ideas a crutch for the weak and dull. The fault is the claim of being one's own sole source.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
The deepest marker is what the commentators call self-deification: the asura takes titles that truly belong to a higher referent, ishvara (lord), bhokta (enjoyer), siddha (accomplished), and pins them on his own small self. 'I am the Lord' is named the climactic fault precisely because it usurps the place that belongs to the inner ruler alone. Ordinary ambition wants to do well; this mind has crowned itself the center and source of everything.
Vedānta Deśika · Śrī Puruṣottama · Vallabhācārya
And it shows in how others are treated. The asura's program is open-ended: kill whoever opposes, keep only those who will serve, seize their wives and wealth, until no equal is left standing anywhere. When the drive to rise turns every other person into an obstacle to remove or property to take, and admits no rival and no limit, it has crossed from ambition into the temperament this verse exposes.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Sant Jñāneśvar
Contemplation
Notice the tell that Ramsukhdas points to. The person who must keep announcing his strength, his wins, his lordship, is usually the one most afraid of looking weak. He recounts every victory and quietly buries every defeat, and underneath the thunder he is being eaten alive by a burning envy he will not admit even to himself. So when you catch your own mind running its triumph-reel, listing what you have conquered, what you possess, how far above others you stand, the practice is not to scold the mind but to look gently for the fear and the jalan, the smoldering resentment, hiding just below the boast. The roar and the burning are the same thing. Seeing that they belong together is the beginning of being free of both.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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