Advaita Vedānta

One Advaita commentator maps the qualities onto the four classes (varnas) as their special or uncommon duties: tejas, kshama, and dhriti are the distinctive dharmas of the kshatriya (warrior); shaucha and adroha of the vaishya (merchant); and na-atimanita of the shudra (servant). On this reading, shaucha is taken specifically as inner purity, the freedom from falsehood and maya in one's use of wealth, because outer bodily cleansing cannot purify the inner impressions (samskaras), and it is precisely the impressions, sorted into sattvic and the rest, that the chapter means to set out as divine, demonic, and other endowments. This commentator further reads the whole list, common and class-specific duties alike, as means applied to the desire to know the Self, citing scripture that 'the brahmins seek to know this one by recitation, sacrifice, gift, and austerity.' Another voice of this school gives the same glosses without the varna scheme, treating the qualities simply as the equipment of one born to the divine endowment.

Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śaṅkarācārya

Viśiṣṭādvaita

This school defines the divine endowment by its relation to the Lord: 'the gods' are those whose nature is to follow the command of the Blessed One (bhagavan), so the divine endowment is just the following of his command. The qualities therefore come to one 'born turned toward' that obedience, born to bring it about. Within this reading some glosses are distinctively framed: purity is scriptural fitness of the outer and inner organs for what is to be done; steadiness is keeping in view what ought to be done even in great calamity; and adroha is the not thwarting of others, the not obstructing of others' free movement. The catalogue, on this view, names the qualified candidate by his full inner equipment, the inheritance he comes to embody.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

This school focuses tightly on defining kshama (forbearance) by appeal to the lexicon, to secure its distinctness from non-anger: forbearance is the not harming of one who has harmed oneself, joined with the absence of anger, for 'he who is without anger toward a foe who does him a fault is called one possessed of forbearance.' The point is pressed that, since non-anger was already stated, forbearance must be the not returning of anger, of the fault, and of the injury to the one who does the wrong, and is thus distinct with respect to the wrong actually done.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

This school grounds the whole list in divine grace and devotional orientation. Tejas is the boldness of the Lord's grace (bhagavad-grace); shaucha includes purification by remembrance (smarana) of the Lord alongside outer bathing; and na-atimanita is the absence of any awakening to one's own being-above-all. The decisive claim is that the twenty-six qualities are not a self-cultivated package by which the seeker climbs into the divine condition by his own effort; they are the qualities of one born to the endowment fit for the Lord's play (krida), given by his grace, present where the heart has been turned toward him. The relation is read in reverse, diagnostically: where these dharmas are present, one is to read a turning-toward-the-Lord (bhagavad-abhimukhya); the qualities mark the inward turning rather than cause it. One commentator of this school glosses 16.1 to 16.3 as a single continuous passage on the divine endowment, the qualities being the marks of the soul whose nature consents to the Lord's word.

Śrī Puruṣottama · Vallabhācārya

Bhakti

This school reads the three verses as one portrait of the qualified person (adhikarin), not a code to enforce but a description of the natural overflow of a birth turned toward the divine side; the verbs are 'they come to be in him who is so born,' and practice (sadhana) refines what begins as the very character (shila) of such a person. One commentary of this school renders the qualities through vivid images: tejas as the mind running of its own accord toward the Supreme, undeterred by protest or by longing for occult powers; dhriti as standing firm like the sage Agastya when the three classes of affliction flood in at once; shaucha as motive-free action conducted with discrimination, like a gold pot filled with Ganges water; adroha as never even conceiving harm to others while securing others' welfare like the holy Ganges and the sun; and na-atimanita as feeling abashed when honoured, as the Ganges felt abashed when Shiva bore her on his head. It pictures the whole divine estate as the Lord's hereditary gift of emancipation, a lamp of twenty-six flames waved before the Supreme Soul.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

Modern commentators present the qualities as the practical equipment of the aspirant (sadhak) and emphasize that the list is a friendly map, not an examination paper. One stresses that 'abhijatasya' means the marks belong to one whose very nature has been turned in the Lord's direction, not one born into a particular family or caste; such an aspirant may begin with only a few of these qualities, but the turning of the heart toward the Lord brings the rest of themselves, because the divine wealth belongs to the Lord and comes to whoever goes to him. On this view tejas is a spiritual radiance born of the absence of vice (of raga and dvesha, attraction and aversion) rather than the heat of anger, and kshama arises not from weakness but from an inner organ with no room left for retaliation. Another voice of this school echoes the varna-mapping of the qualities and calls the divine wealth a rare, inexhaustible gift from the Lord that leads to the imperishable Brahmic seat and is the shortcut to liberation.

Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas