Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the verse as the opening of a two-verse description that ends by labeling such people 'asura-nishchaya', of demonic resolve. They place it within a sorting of people by the three gunas (sattva, rajas, tamas, the strands of nature): the sattvic are rare, while the rajasic and tamasic are many, and this verse marks out the worst among the rajasic-tamasic. One source draws the contrast that some rajasic and tamasic people, through the ripening of past merit, become sattvic and qualified for scriptural means, but these others, through stubborn insistence and bad company born of ill fate, cling to their lower state, fall from the scriptural path, and become partakers of sorrow here and hereafter. One source identifies the un-scriptural source precisely as the Buddhist and other non-Vedic agamas, and another names scripture-opposing Kaulika agamas prescribing own-flesh-offering and blood-satisfaction of deities. The label 'demon' is understood by action: though these appear as men and lack the demon-kind, they are demons because their conviction is opposed to the meaning of the Veda and they do the work of demons.

Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śaṅkarācārya

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators read 17.5 together with 17.6 as a single composition, answering the question raised earlier (16.23) about those who cast aside the scripture. They give the verse a sharply theistic and personal turn through the next line of the passage: when the person withers the body's elements he is also withering 'Me', the Lord, who is a portion-bearing presence within the body as the inner controller (antaryamin). The very discipline becomes anti-spiritual: an austerity outside scripture, undertaken with bad inner stuff, harms not just the body but the Lord seated in the body. They explain that demons are precisely doers of what is contrary to the Lord's command, and by that contrariety they gain no connection with even a particle of happiness, falling instead into calamity, into an impure hell. One source adds that the Lord now turns to unfold the topic itself, the difference by quality among scriptural acts, beginning with food, since the growth of sattva has food for its root: 'the mind is made of food', 'on purity of food, purity of being'.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Bhakti

These commentators frame the verse as the direct answer to a question carried over from the previous discussion: what is the standing of those who cast aside scriptural injunctions yet worship with faith and seem free of desire? The answer is that such freedom and faith are only apparent. They read the couplet as a sub-division of the rajasic-tamasic: not all who lack scriptural knowledge drift, some, by past merit, even rise to sattvic, but a class of utterly unfortunate men, by following the herd (gatanugati) and the company of imposters (pakhandas), seize on a deliberately self-chosen, scripture-rejecting austerity. One source explains 'desire' as the craving for one's own freedom from old age and death and for a kingdom, and 'force' as the sheer capacity to perform such austerity, citing Hiranyakashipu as the type. These voices, like the Vishishtadvaita reading, take the wasting of 'Me' as the wasting of the individual soul who is a portion of the Lord, and conclude that such people are established in the standing of demons. One source, in extended Marathi, paints them as people who will not even let scripture-knowers approach, who mock their elders and the learned, and who are like a man drowning who neither swims nor takes a boat, or a sick man who kicks away the medicine.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the couplet as a precise sub-division and give a warning about appearances. One stresses that some men, from kama-kara (acting from desire alone as the sole motive), seize on an austerity the scriptures have never laid down, and names Shambuka of the Ramayana as the type whom the Lord calls outright 'asura-nishchaya', the very figure denounced in chapter 16. The other develops the most pointed claim: even an austerity that outwardly seems sattvic can be demonic, for the outward act-shape of tapas is no proof of its inward configuration. What gives the configuration is the prompting from which it springs and the deity toward which it is bent. Such a tapa may be undertaken for the favor of gods while seeming sattvic, or as fierce tapas for the grace of yakshas and the like to win kingdom and wealth. By the absence of scriptural rule the act is cut from the divine frame, and by the company of desire and attachment it is cut from the divine endowment (daivi sampad) of the prior chapter; what remains is a demonic settledness the chapter is preparing the devotee to recognize.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Modern

These commentators emphasize the contrast between this person and the faithful-but-ignorant worshipper of the previous verse, and they read the demonic label as the very worst case. One draws a careful three-step gradient: in 16.23 scripture is dropped by mere indifference (upeksha), in 17.1 by ignorance, but here it is dropped by direct opposition, the person holding what scripture forbids to be supreme and acting against it by whim. He notes that the previous verse used the word 'yajante' (they sacrifice) for the faithful, while this verse uses 'tapyante' (they perform austerity), because for these men reverence rests in austerity alone, austerity is their sacrifice, and they take self-invented torment of the body to be austerity. He stresses a fourfold opposition found nowhere else in the Gita: against faith, against scriptural rule, against living beings, and against the Lord. He also clarifies that 'asura-nishchaya' here is not the general demonic-tempered seeker but the worst among them, the special denier (nastika). One source warns plainly that bodily torture will not bring emancipation and that their lot is pitiable, doomed to destruction. These voices keep the diagnosis practical: the marker is the inner condition, not the outward severity.

Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak