Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the verse as a clean portrait of the materialist or lokayata position, framed against the authority of the Veda. The asuras' first move is to reject the Veda's validity, and from that rejection everything else falls: no pramana or means of valid knowledge, no dharma and adharma, no Ishvara, only desire as the world's stream-cause. One commentator frames the verse as the asura's answer to a pressing objection: since the Veda is well known to all, setting forth what to do and what to avoid, and since the Lord chastises those who break his command, how could anyone be ignorant of all this? The answer is that the asuras, obstructed by strong sin, simply do not grant the Veda's authority, and so act as they please. Some note that even if an unseen cause were granted, the asura says it would only come to rest in nature, so the world's variety can be taken as merely natural; with the seen cause available, there is no room to imagine an unseen one. On the disputed compound 'aparaspara', one of these voices rejects as forced the alternative reading that takes it as a seed-and-sprout cycle of dharma-adharma impressions, keeping the plain sense of male-female union.

Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Here each denial is read precisely as the negation of a positive truth about Brahman. To deny the world is 'real' is to deny that it has Brahman for its self, being the effect of the Brahman that the word 'real' indicates. To deny it has a 'foundation' is to deny that it is founded in Brahman, who holds and bears all the worlds; a scriptural image is cited of the best of serpents bearing the earth and the garland of worlds with their gods, demons, and men on his head. To deny it has a 'Lord' is to deny that it is governed by the supreme Brahman, the Lord of all, of true resolve, of whom it was said, 'I am the arising of all; from Me everything sets going.' So the asura's creed is the point-by-point inversion of the truth that the world rests in, is held by, and is ruled by the Lord. One of these voices adds that this materialist view is to be recognized in any age by its marks: denial of the Lord, reduction of the world to bare generation, and the elevation of desire as sole cause.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

These commentators read the verse through the identity of the world's truth, foundation, and Lord with Vishnu, and they widen its scope. The demonic are not only those who literally say the world is unreal; the verse condemns all who refuse to accept Vishnu as the cause of the world's origination and the rest. Several Upanishadic texts are cited to ground this, including 'the secret name of Him, the truth, is the truth of the truth,' and the teaching of the two forms of Brahman, the formed and the formless, the mortal and the immortal. The point is that the world's truth in the primary sense belongs to Vishnu: the vital powers, formed and formless, are the world, and Vishnu is the truth of those very powers. Distinctively, these voices reject reading 'aparaspara-sambhuta' as 'one arisen from another,' because the verse is in the mode of negation: the asura is denying mutual origination, not affirming it. Mutual origination is in fact something the Lord himself has taught (as in 'from food beings arise'), so it cannot be a demonic doctrine; the censure falls on the denial, not on mutual arising itself.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read 'satya' as the highest reality, the vastu accomplished by its own act and reaching the topmost pitch, and the world as 'tat-atmaka', having that reality for its very self; texts are cited that the Lord alone is the source and the truth of the truth, and that 'sat alone was this in the beginning.' The asuras, by contrast, call the world 'asatya' on the argument that it is a maya-construction of knowledge and ignorance, which would make the Veda and all its prescribed means vain, like sky-flowers or rabbit-horns that have no being. They deny the world a ground in Brahman and deny that it is governed by the all-pervading Purushottama whose resolve is true, against the Lord's own word, 'I am the source of all, from me all proceeds.' One of these voices, reading from the standpoint of grace (pusti) and devotion, draws out the sharpest point: to call the world 'anishvara', to say it has no doer, is the structural correlate of having no turning toward God. The lokayata-like denial is the speech in which the asuric configuration most fully shows itself, and so is the very position from which the devotee is being warned.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

These voices treat the verse as the asura's full metaphysical declaration and dwell on its human consequences. One develops the inner logic at length: knock out scripture and the Lord, and only desire is left to fill the void, which is why every later sign of the asura has to take the shape it does. A vivid expansion pictures the asura mocking sacrifice, idol-worship, and meditation as deceptions; reasoning that the strong rightly devour the weak as fish eat fish; observing that thieves are not poisoned by stolen wealth nor adulterers struck by disease, and concluding there is no next world and no God since neither can be seen; and finishing that since worm in filth and Indra with Urvashi are equally pleased, there is no heaven or hell, only passion as the root of all creation. Two of these commentators link the verse forward: clinging to such constructed views, men of small intelligence, ruined in soul, taking the body for the self, given to fierce and violent deeds, become enemies of the world and arise for its destruction, causing it to fall away from the highest reality.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva

Kashmir Shaivism

This reading is terse and fixes on a single word. The world as the asura sees it is 'akimcitka', 'without anything': there is in it no effect whatever beyond what is plainly seen. The visible exhausts the real; nothing further, no unseen cause and no deeper ground, is granted.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Modern

These commentators name the position in plain terms and trace its psychology. One identifies it directly with the Charvakas and other materialist atheists who deny Brahman as the support of the world, deny an Ishvara, deny the law of karma, and hold the world to be a world of chance with sexual passion as the sole cause of all living creatures; he notes a further possible sense of 'mutual union' as the combination of atoms, after the Vaiseshika account. The other draws the contrast with the person of faith (astika), who trusts dharma, Ishvara, the other world, and rebirth, where the asura trusts none of these and dismisses all worship, charity, austerity, study, pilgrimage, and vows as a contrivance to mislead the uneducated. Both arrive at the same warning: once faith in God and dharma is dropped, the only conceivable engine of the world is appetite, and once that is granted, there remains no reason for self-restraint of any kind.

Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas