Advaita Vedānta

This school reads the verse as the direct answer to a logical objection. Since these very people are seen performing Vedic acts such as sacrifice and gift, it seems wrong that they should fall into hell. The verse rebuts this. Their sacrifices are 'in name only', devoid of the prescribed limbs and the proper way of performance, done with hypocrisy and the carrying of a banner of false dharma rather than with faith. Therefore they do not become partakers of its fruit. One commentator gives an unusually exact analysis of pride and intoxication: 'mana' is the wealth-occasioned superimposition on oneself of an excess of worthiness of worship, and 'mada' is the wealth-occasioned conceit that even another, such as a teacher, is unworthy of worship. Another lists the specific purifications a true rite requires (of wealth, knowledge, self, priest, and wife) that the asuric rite omits.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

This school stresses the gap between outer religious form and inner asuric content. The person holds himself full, doing nothing, and sacrifices thinking 'I am a sacrificer', the whole point being to proclaim himself a sacrificer. The intoxication is bred not only by wealth but also by conceit of learning and of birth. The verse names the asura's mock-piety: the sacrifice is undertaken, but the inner stance is pretense and the prescribed manner is ignored. The outer form is religious; the inner content is asuric.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Śuddhādvaita

This school reads the deficiency of the rite as the absence of God-centered devotion. 'Avidhi-purvakam', the lack of rule, is unfolded as the absence of two things together: the knowledge of being God's own portion, and 'bhajana', loving worship of him. These two together are the very rule of any true sacrifice. The asura's sacrifice is therefore 'shabda-atmaka', made of mere words, a name of a name: it has the surface shape of the rite but is empty of the 'bhagavad-bhava', the God-feeling, that gave the rite its content. The honor he enjoys comes from displaying his own dharmas in the worlds, not from the devotees of God.

Śrī Puruṣottama · Vallabhācārya

Bhakti

This school sets the asura's worship as the structural inverse of the devotee's. Where the devotee gives himself, the asura gives only a name; where the devotee sacrifices in faith, the asura sacrifices in ostentation; where the devotee follows the scriptural rule, the asura overrides it. One commentator details the false grandeur: he sacrifices to deities of his own imagining, for the prosperity of his own householder followers, while wearing the garb of the renounced and titles such as 'supreme swan' and 'great ascetic'. One devotional poet draws the scene vividly: such men cannot bear even the breeze that carries the names of God or holy persons, they dispense with the proper fire-pit, pavilion, and altar, and under the pretext of inviting people to a sacrifice they gather a crowd only to extract gifts and presents, performing sham rites for profit and to the ruin of beings.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator reads 'sacrifices in name' chiefly as 'fruitlessly': because the asura is smeared with anger and the rest, all his works are destroyed, so the rite bears no fruit. He offers the same two alternative senses other commentators give (a sacrifice by mere label, or one done for the sake of fame), but adds a distinctive theological turn: hating the worlds, these people hate God alone, since Vasudeva is the dwelling-place of all; bearing hatred toward the self, they practise what is harmful to the self, the cause of the fall into hell, and so God casts them into demonic wombs.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Modern

These commentators translate the verse into concrete contemporary behavior. The proud man esteems himself as possessed of every virtue, treats others as inferiors, will not bow to elders, teachers, or monks, and stands erect like an iron post, drunk on the wine of wealth; he performs sacrifices only to increase his own fame, wanting all to call him a Somayaji, with no idea of service and no faith. One gives sharp modern examples: the rite exists for the impression it makes, so the donor's name must appear in the papers, on the pamphlets, and on nameplates of the temples he funds; he feeds brahmins with calculated stinginess yet sets out many leaf-plates so the heap will advertise how many he fed; his cow-shelters keep only milk-giving cows and starve the rest while the leaflets boast of cow-service; even his private worship is really worship of his own name, body, and bank balance, and his intellect has so reversed that the correct looks incorrect and the incorrect looks correct.

Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas