Advaita Vedānta

These commentators mount a full scriptural defense against the charge that fighting violates the rule of non-injury. They concede that scripture says 'do not injure any being', but argue this is a general rule narrowed by a special injunction, just as the killing within the agnishomiya sacrifice is enjoined and therefore lawful. Their principle is: where a positive injunction has already taken hold, a prohibition has no scope. One of them adds that slaying even revered elders like Bhishma and Drona is no sin because they have joined the side of aggressors (atatayin), citing Manu that one may slay without hesitation even a teacher or learned brahmin who comes as an aggressor, and answering the counter-objection that scripture forbids killing a brahmin by limiting that rule to treacherous killing done for personal gain. War, by contrast, is itself a duty enjoined by scripture, so its fruit, heaven, carries no taint.

Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī

Śuddhādvaita

This reading takes 'yadrcchaya' not as blind chance but as 'by Bhagavan's will'. The war has come of its own, but its coming is the Lord's doing. So the true fortune is not merely worldly gain or even heaven; it is that this war places the warrior in the very presence of the Lord and aligns him with the Lord's will. The blessedness of the kshatriya is therefore measured by nearness to God, not by the rewards of battle.

Śrī Puruṣottama

Viśiṣṭādvaita

This commentator explicitly rejects reading 'yadrcchaya' as 'causeless'. It is brought about 'without effort' on Arjuna's part, but only because an earlier store of extraordinary merit is now fruiting. On 'heaven', he supplies the classical definition as the home of unrivaled pleasure, a place where there is neither heat nor cold, no pain mixed in, and the joy does not fade. He also unpacks 'sukhinah' (happy) carefully: since pleasure is not literally the cause of getting a war, the word either points to the war as the means to pleasure, or names a fitness-for-pleasure, and that fitness is itself merit. Dharmas naturally yield unequaled pleasure, and only obstruction by fruit-seeking spoils that, which is why the verse stresses non-obstruction.

Vedānta Deśika

Bhakti

This commentator draws out a strikingly compassionate consequence. In a righteous war, those who die gain even greater happiness than the victors. So Arjuna should see that by slaying Bhishma and the others he is not harming them but doing them a greater good, making them, in fact, happier than himself. The verse's stress on the warrior dying without even performing the disciplines that are the ordinary means to heaven supports this: death in righteous war is the higher fortune, so the act Arjuna recoils from is an act of love toward its objects.

Śrīla Viśvanātha

Bhedabheda

This commentator widens the verse beyond warriors. The mention of the kshatriya is only an illustration. For everyone, performing one's own proper duty conduces to the highest good, and nothing serves that good more than a righteous war that does not depart from righteousness. He reads the passage as the place where the Gita joins knowledge and action together with respect to the highest good, so the verse is not just about Arjuna's battle but about the general worth of doing one's own work.

Śrī Bhāskara

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator reads the verse very tersely, tying it to the previous teaching on 'your own dharma'. Since one's own dharma cannot be taken away from a person, the trembling and hesitation Arjuna feels about the war is simply not fitting. The emphasis falls on the inalienability of one's own duty rather than on heaven or fame.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Modern

This commentator anchors 'yadrcchaya' in the actual story. He retells how Duryodhana imposed thirteen years of exile on the Pandavas through a rigged dice game, then refused to return even a needle-point of land, and how the Pandavas repeatedly sued for peace and were refused. Only because every path to peace was closed by the other side did the war 'come of itself' to Arjuna. The point is that this is no war Arjuna chose or wanted; it arrived as the last remaining course in a righteous cause, and for the warrior who fights bravely and dies in it the door of heaven stands open.

Swami Ramsukhdas