Chapter 16 · Verse 24·Spoken by Krishna
तस्माच्छास्त्रं प्रमाणं ते कार्याकार्यव्यवस्थितौ।ज्ञात्वा शास्त्रविधानोक्तं कर्म कर्तुमिहार्हसि
tasmāch chhāstraṁ pramāṇaṁ te kāryākārya-vyavasthitau jñātvā śhāstra-vidhānoktaṁ karma kartum ihārhasi
So let scripture be your authority in deciding what should and should not be done. Understand what the scriptural rules set forth, and act on it here.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
his is the closing verse of the chapter, and Krishna draws his practical conclusion from everything said before. He has just shown that action driven by raw desire, turned away from scripture, leads nowhere good. So he says: therefore let scripture be your authority. The word for scripture is 'shastra', and the word for authority is 'pramana', meaning the valid means of knowing, the source you can trust to settle a matter. In deciding what should and should not be done, what is duty and what is not duty (kartavya and akartavya), scripture alone is that trusted source. Several commentators stress the force of 'alone': not your own private guess, not the word of a clever person, but scripture is the decisive reference.
Braided from 10 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Ramsukhdas
Scripture here is not narrowly one book. Most commentators take it to mean the whole accepted body: the Veda (Shruti) together with what depends on it, the Smriti or remembered law-books, the Puranas, the histories, and the rest. Its instruction takes the form of an injunction or a prohibition, 'one should do this', 'one should not do that', often carried by the optative or imperative mood of the Sanskrit verb. Some add a concrete picture of how this works: scripture names a fault in neglecting a required rite, and an atonement to remove it; it names a fault in a forbidden act like killing, and an atonement for that too. So scripture functions as a working code: it tells you which acts are enjoined and which are forbidden, with consequences attached.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva
Having known what scripture lays down, you are then fit to act. The verse says 'you ought to do' the action it prescribes, and the word 'here' (iha) is read as pointing to the field of action, this human world, the ground where one is qualified to act. For Arjuna concretely this means his own duty as a warrior (svadharma), namely the coming battle. The pattern is clear and repeated: avoid what is forbidden, and perform what is enjoined. This is the one tool by which a person can actually tell right action from wrong in a real situation, rather than trusting the impulse of desire, which the demonic temperament earlier in the chapter precisely failed to do.
Braided from 9 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Ramsukhdas
The verse is read as the seal of the whole chapter, and as a bridge forward. Looking back, the sixteenth chapter divided the divine and the demonic endowments (the daivi and asuri sampad), traced the root of the demonic to desire, anger, and greed, and now reduces the entire teaching to one practical instruction: abandon the breach of scripture and, with faith, do what scripture teaches. The fruit named is real: by keeping scripture comes purity of mind (chitta-shuddhi or sattva-shuddhi), and through that, right knowledge and finally liberation (moksha). Several commentators add that this naturally raises the next question, what of those who set scripture aside yet act with faith, which opens the seventeenth chapter.
Braided from 7 commentators
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śaṅkarācārya
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read the verse straightforwardly as Krishna's final ruling for the seeker of the human goal. Scripture alone is the valid means of knowing what to do and not do; one's own surmise or the word of a clever man does not count. The 'here' marks the field of eligibility for action in this world, where Arjuna's own warrior-duty, battle and the rest, is to be done. The chapter is summed up as teaching that the seeker, having abandoned the root defects of desire, anger, and greed, should with faith devote himself to scripture and perform what it states, and that only the scripture-follower gains purity of mind and the rest, not anyone else. One of them spells out the mechanism with examples: scripture names the fault in omitting a required rite and prescribes an atonement, and names the fault in a forbidden act and prescribes its atonement.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
This school agrees that scripture alone is the authority but fills in what scripture finally makes known: the supreme truth, the highest Person, and the action that pleases Him and is the means of attaining Him. So one is to know that truth and that action as scripture teaches, understanding it rightly, neither falling short of it nor going beyond it, and take up that alone. One source presses why scripture and not the self: because the inner desire-impulse cannot be trusted, which was exactly the demonic failing, and one's own self-judgment is fallible, whereas scripture has stable authority across all cases; it is not one source among many but the decisive one, the operational reference to consult in any doubt about what to do.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Śuddhādvaita
On this Pushtimarga (path of grace) reading, scripture is the authority but always for the devotee whose heart has already been given to the Lord. The duty laid down by scripture, the warrior's own work, is to be done with the mind given over to the Lord (Bhagavan). The divine side of the chapter is identified with conducting one's own scriptural work and giving it to the Lord; the demonic side with the rise of independent, self-willed desire. One source is careful to say that scripture is not set up here as an autonomous regulator standing over against the Lord's will; rather it is the authority for the devotee already declared born to the divine endowment, the rule for the daily discrimination of duty and non-duty whose very absence marked the demonic earlier in the chapter. So the inward divine configuration and the outward scriptural rule of conduct fit together, and the devotee is fit to act in this world because the Lord has opened both to him.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Dvaita
This reading sharpens what makes scripture authoritative: scripture in the form of the Veda is faultless and not of human authorship, and for that reason it, and not any statement conceived by a person liable to error, is the authority for one's duty. Its injunctions and prohibitions, carried by the optative and by words like 'ought', tell what to do and not do. Knowing the enjoined and the forbidden, and abandoning the forbidden, one is to perform the enjoined acts, the fire-sacrifice and battle and the rest, for the welfare of the world. The closing note draws a firm line: those firmly devoted to the meaning of the Veda attain heaven and eternal liberation, while those outside the Veda attain the hells.
Śrīla Baladeva
Bhakti
The devotional commentators receive the rule warmly and concretely. One reads the verse as the chapter's hinge: the whole portrait of the two endowments was drawn so that at the end scripture can be put forward as the one authority, the root of purity of being, right knowledge, and liberation, and on the wider Vaishnava reading the very ground of unwavering devotion to the Lord. The other gives vivid images of trustful obedience: scripture is like a mother who protects her child from evil and gives wholesome things; the seeker should renounce what scripture forbids though it be a kingdom, and accept what it enjoins though it taste like poison, and with such firm faith no evil can reach him.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
The modern voices render the rule for the contemporary reader. One urges that whoever desires the welfare of the Self should respect the Vedas and Smritis as the code of right conduct, renouncing all they prohibit and doing wholeheartedly whatever is worthy. Another puts it plainly: let no one be a law unto himself, but take as authority the law laid down by those who have known and lived religion. A third deepens the point: those lost in attachment to body and breath do not distinguish duty from non-duty and fall by nature into the demonic, so hold scripture before you as the standard; he adds that the conduct of realized great souls and scripture are not two separate standards but one, since scripture itself is formed from the realized conduct of such souls. He also draws the chapter's practical lesson: an act like the war that has come of itself is not what binds; what binds is action done from selfishness, ego, and intent to harm, while one's own natural duty done without selfishness, aimed only at the supreme, incurs no fault.
Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If scripture is the final authority for what I should and should not do, how do I follow it honestly when I cannot read the originals, when scriptures seem to disagree, or when my own conscience pulls a different way?
First, see what the verse is actually correcting. It is not asking you to become a scholar; it is asking you not to make yourself the sole judge. The danger it names is settling right and wrong by private opinion, which is really desire deciding in disguise, and that was exactly the demonic failing of the chapter. So the move is humility: do not be a law unto yourself, but take as your guide the law laid down by those who have known and lived religion.
Mahatma Gandhi · Swami Ramsukhdas · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Second, 'scripture' here is broader than one text. It is the whole received tradition, Veda with the law-books, histories, and Puranas, and on one important reading it includes the lived conduct of realized great souls, which is not a second authority but the same one, since scripture itself grew out of how such souls acted. So when you cannot reach the originals, the conduct and counsel of those whose lives agree with that tradition is a real and faithful way in.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Ramsukhdas · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Third, on the seeming conflict between scripture and conscience: the commentators ask you to learn the rule before judging it, knowing what is enjoined and what is forbidden, then taking it up rightly, neither falling short of it nor going beyond it. The orientation is trustful rather than suspicious. One image is of scripture as a mother who restrains you from harm and gives what is wholesome; firm faith in that guidance is itself a protection from going wrong.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda
Finally, the test in practice is your motive. The act itself seldom binds; what binds is selfishness, ego, and the intent to harm. So follow scripture to do your own proper duty, but do it without self-interest and with the supreme alone as your aim, and the very purity of mind it produces becomes the ground of right knowledge and freedom.
Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Contemplation
When you face a real decision and feel the pull to settle it by your own opinion, pause and notice that very impulse. The chapter's whole warning is that desire dressed as judgment, deciding sin and merit by what you want, is precisely the demonic turn. So set your own surmise down and hold scripture before you as the standard, taking it seriously and obeying it, not as an outer constraint but as the one tool that lets you in real life tell duty from non-duty. Remember the deeper point: the act itself rarely binds you. What binds is action done from selfishness, from ego, from wishing harm. The same act done as your own natural duty, without self-interest and with the single aim of the supreme, leaves you free. And you are not asked to trust a cold rulebook; the realized great souls and scripture are one voice, for scripture itself was formed from how such souls actually lived. To live by it is to keep the company of the wise.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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