Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the verse mainly as a problem of classification and carefully fence off who is being asked about. Two kinds of doers were settled before: those who knew the rule but cast it off through unbelief and act by self-will are demonic and unfit for the human goals; those who knew the rule and followed it with faith are divine and fit for the goals. The person here is a third, mixed type: he disregards the rule through laziness and the like, yet, faithful, follows the usage of elders and worships. Because he carries a likeness to both the demon (disregard of the rule) and the god (faithful worship), and nothing decides between them, Arjuna doubts. The key qualifier 'endowed with faith' proves the deliberate transgressor is not meant, since such faith cannot arise in one who knowingly acts against scripture. One of these voices adds that the 'scripture' set aside covers all dharma-authorities (revelation, good conduct, family custom), and that the elder-conduct in view must be the uncontested kind, where no charge of pure darkness arises; he also frames the threefold sattva-rajas-tamas as naming effects by their causes.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators read the verse as the doorway to a chapter whose verdict is already firm: all that lies outside scripture is, in the end, fruitless. One gives the plain sense of 'standing' (nishtha) as that in which one abides, so the question is simply whether such a person abides in sattva, in rajas, or in tamas. But the answer is framed by holding in view the fruitlessness of faith that scripture has not sanctioned, and of the sacrifice and the rest that flow from it. On this reading the chapter does not redeem unscriptural worship; it sorts it by quality only so as to make clear how the candidate who acts with faith but without conformity to the rule falls outside the previous chapter's standard. The mark of what scripture truly establishes is what is being taught, in its threefold form.

Yāmunācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

These commentators insist the 'casting aside' of the scriptural rule here is mere ignorance, not deliberate rejection on the conviction that scripture lacks authority. The binding rule, that the whole Veda with its meaning is to be mastered by the twice-born, is received by every twice-born person and has been let go only by those who never came to know it. They give two strong reasons against reading it as deliberate rejection. First, if the verse were asking about the Veda's outright opponents, the answer would simply be 'they are tamasic,' with no need to divide the question three ways, and the chapter's threefold division of faith would give no answer at all. Second, no one of such a person could ever be called even partly sattvic, because the sattvic by their very nature practice dharma, dharma has its sole root in the Veda, and there is no dharma opposed to the Veda; so a Veda-opponent who was also sattvic would be a contradiction. Therefore the person asked about is the merely ignorant, not the hostile.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

Read from the Pushtimarga, the verse is not about the hostile soul at all but about the well-meaning jiva who has drifted past the rule and yet still acts from faith. One voice marks that the faith in question is the 'self-willed' faith that follows its own bent, and the whole chapter is the Lord's ranked answer to this single question, the threefold faith being the inner posture from which all the outer worship, food, sacrifice, austerity, and giving take shape. The other voice develops the question into an explicitly upward gradation: he asks whether some good fruit such as knowledge arises hereafter by resting on sattva and the rest, and reads the chapter as a single ascending way, so that even one whose present footing is tamas may, by faithful worship inherited through the stream of tradition, be lifted footing by footing to rajas, then to sattva, then to the rise of knowledge, and at last, by going beyond the qualities, to the gaining of Krishna himself. On this reading the address 'Krishna' as the fruit-giver signals that without fruit even the cause and the authority of inherited conduct would stand in vain.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

These commentators read the verse as the very hinge of the chapter and put the question in terms of fitness for knowledge. One frames it by his own opening couplet: of the causes of fitness (adhikara), faith is the chief, and the chief faith is the sattvic kind; so the chapter sets out the threefold lower kind. He then asks pointedly whether the person who leaves the rule aside yet acts not by desire but by faith has fitness for self-knowledge or not. The doubt is genuine because faith is itself sattvic, while the slighting of scripture through the thought that it is troublesome, or through laziness, is itself rajasic and tamasic; if his impulse rests on sattva he too would have fitness for the knowledge already taught, and otherwise not. Another voice underscores that these people do not act under the impulse of desire at all, but are free of sense-enjoyment and faithful in their worship. The Marathi voice fills in the human picture with great sympathy: such a person may simply lack a place, a time, a teacher, the means, the merit, or the intelligence for scriptural study, and so, like a child copying a master's letters or a blind man following one who can see, he holds the conduct of the learned as his authority and worships in full faith.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator gives the question in its barest form, without sectarian framing: those who carry on their dealings with faith but without resting on the rule of scripture, what is their course? The verse is taken simply as the plain question it is.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Modern

These commentators read the verse with an eye to the ordinary, sincere person and the practical difficulties of the spiritual life. One reads 'nishtha' as mental condition or state, and gives a concrete example of the well-meaning mistake: a man who has faith may, through ignorance, run after deities instead of worshipping the all-pervading Supreme as scripture enjoins; the question is about such a person, not about those who despise scripture for want of faith. Another lays out at length why scriptural knowledge is so hard to come by: scripture is vast and the lifespan short, a true teacher is hard to find, intellects are mostly not pure and sharp, statements seem to conflict, and facilities for learning are not always available; yet such a person still does charity, ritual, and worship with faith, following sages as a child copies a model. A third places the question squarely in the coming age of kali, when knowledge of scripture and access to true saints will be scarce and many false saints will be hard to tell from real ones; he reads sattva as the divine endowment and rajas-and-tamas together as the demonic, and even hears in the address 'Krishna,' the one who pulls, an implied question about the final direction in which the Lord will draw such people.

Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas