Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the threefold faith concretely through the objects it turns toward in worship. Sattvic faith turns toward the worship of the gods (devas); rajasic faith turns toward the worship of yakshas and rakshasas (lesser, power-linked beings); tamasic faith turns toward the worship of departed spirits and ghosts (bhutas and pretas). On this reading the verse already names a hierarchy of cults, and one of these commentators presses the consequence sharply: those joined with sattvic faith are effectively counted among gods, qualified for the scripturally stated means and its fruit, while those joined with rajasic and tamasic faith are counted as demons, lacking that qualification and its fruit. The threefold faith thus sorts worshippers themselves into the divine and the demoniac.

Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī

Bhakti

These commentators stress the contrast between two distinct faiths and root the verse in the worshipper's relation to the Lord and to scripture. For those who set out from knowledge of scriptural truth, with worship of the Supreme Lord (Paramesvara) as their object, faith is of one kind only, sattvic; the threefold faith belongs specifically to the embodied who proceed by mere worldly custom (loka-acara), without scriptural discrimination. One source warns through vivid images that bare faith is not enough: faith is a pure principle, yet poured into a being constituted of the three gunas it takes on their colour, the way Ganga water is spoiled in a liquor pot or cool sandalwood burns the hand once set alight; under rajas faith becomes a mere broom sweeping out actions, and under tamas it chases forbidden enjoyment.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators give the most analytic account of how nature produces faith, tracing an inner chain: there is the carried-over impress (samskara) from former lives, then the particular 'relish' or taste (ruchi) it occasions, and out of that relish faith arises, for faith is a haste toward a means, preceded by the trust that 'this will accomplish what I hold dear.' The impress, the relish, and the faith are all properties of the self, arising from the self's conjunction with the gunas; their begetters are the traits present in body, senses, inner organ, and objects, definable only by their effect, the gunas sattva and the rest. Faith is thus the natural inflow of the candidate's own inner stuff, and that is why it is threefold.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the verse against their devotional centre. The faith that gains the Lord, whose fruit is reaching him, is of one form alone (ekarupa) and is sounded as 'beyond the gunas' (nirguna) by the very nirguna nature of its goal and of the self; this is the faith born of scriptural injunction directed to the Lord's worship. By contrast the threefold svabhava-ja faith, the inheritance of guna-samskara, is the faith of those who carry body-conceit (deha-abhimana) and live by leaving scriptural rule aside; being threefold and divided, it does not accomplish that highest fruit. One source frames the coming chapter pastorally: the threefold analysis is not the field on which liberation is reached, but the field across which the devotee is led, by hearing, toward the one-formed faith that draws the Lord's grace.

Śrī Puruṣottama · Vallabhācārya

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator turns the verse toward the nature of scripture (shastra) and who can truly fulfil it. Scripture, he holds, streams from pure self-reflective awareness and ranges from the most subtle form, the Pranava and the like, out to the doctrines current in ordinary dealings; of itself it discriminates what is to be done and not done. But scripture bears fruit only for those who have sattva: the one whose heart is by nature tender with an excess of sattva, whatever he does is itself scriptural, while the one made turbid by rajas and tamas does not really carry out scripture even when he performs its outward acts, because he does not enact its full meaning. The chapter's purport, on this reading, is that the meaning of scripture bears fruit in those who have abandoned desire, anger, and delusion.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Dvaita

These commentators read the verse as a deliberate logical move answering the question of the previous verse. Arjuna had asked about the 'standing' of those who worship while ignorant of Vedic ordinance; but ignorance, being common to all of them and having no subdivisions, cannot be the distinguishing factor that would yield an answer. So Krishna divides instead by the faith that was already named as their qualification ('endowed with faith'), splitting it into sattvic and the rest, and resting their standing upon that. The threefold division of faith is thus the only available basis for telling these worshippers apart.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Modern

One of these commentators carefully distinguishes the possible origins of faith, faith born of company (sangha), faith born of scripture (shastra), and faith born of nature (svabhava), and notes that Krishna specifies the last: the faith that arises of itself, without company and without scripture, in people simply flowing along their inherited stream. The same commentator connects this to the earlier daiva/asura split: from the standpoint of bondage both rajasic and tamasic faith count as asuri, yet their bondage differs, the rajasic man performing desire-driven scriptural rites that win heaven and then return, the tamasic man performing no scriptural rites at all and sinking to lower states, and it is to mark this difference that the one asuri faith is split into rajasi and tamasi. Another of these commentators emphasizes that faith is no mere intellectual belief but the very support of life, recognizable by its fruits the way a tree is known by its fruit.

Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak