Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the image as inclusion: the small fruits are contained within the great. Whatever bathing or drinking the little well serves is already served, all at once, by the flood; just so, whatever fruit there is in all the Vedas is included in the bliss the knower wins through knowledge. The reasoning is that the petty joys are literally portions of the bliss of Brahman, cited from scripture: 'on a fraction of this very bliss the other beings live.' The one infinite bliss only looks parceled into 'portion' and 'whole' because ignorance imagines limiting bounds, the way one space looks divided when pots are set in it. Remove the pots and the division vanishes. So at the dawn of Self-knowledge the supreme bliss is attained, and every lesser bliss with it, leaving no reason to chase the small fruits separately.

Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda

Dvaita

These commentators also read the verse as inclusion, but draw a sharper polemical edge from it. The setup is an objection: since the heaven-bound fruits of desire-driven rites do not fall to the knower, knowledge and ritual seem to stand on a level, so why urge yoga at all? The answer is that whatever fruit lies in all the Vedas is wholly contained in the fruit of the knowing brahmana, even though he is aware of those lesser fruits. The 'brahmana' is defined as one with direct knowledge, since he goes through to Brahman, and 'knowing' shows that his fruit is knowledge itself; direct knowledge has further realization as its fruit. The decisive point is that the knower's fruit is like the water of the great ocean by its sheer vastness, while the ritualist's fruit is like well-water, exceedingly small. So the two are emphatically not equal, and urging the seeker toward the great, infinite-fruited path of knowledge is entirely fitting.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Viśiṣṭādvaita

This commentator reads the image the other way, as selective sufficiency. The point is not that the flood contains the wells but that a thirsty man at a flooded well takes only as much water as serves his purpose, not the whole flood. Applied to scripture: among all the Vedas, the brahmana who discerns, the Vedic man who seeks liberation, should take up only that which is the means to liberation, and nothing else. For a seeker who stands in sattva, this much alone is to be taken up. The accent falls on selection: not draining the whole Veda, but drawing from it precisely what serves release.

Rāmānujācārya

Bhakti

The devotional commentators turn the metaphor toward worship of the one Lord and split internally on emphasis. One develops it as inclusion with a devotional twist: as different wells serve different chores, cleansing, washing, bathing, drinking, and all those uses are met in one great lake that also spares the labor of going about and gives sweeter water, so all the ends pursued by worshipping various deities through the Vedas are accomplished by worship of the one Lord; the 'knowing brahmana' is the one who knows the Veda's real purport, which is devotion, and this single object is what makes his understanding single rather than scattered. Another reads it as selective sufficiency answering a practical worry: studying all the Vedas takes great time and invites distraction, so how can the resolute understanding arise? The answer is that, just as one draws from a reservoir only what serves bathing and the rest, the seeker draws from the whole Veda only what yields knowledge of the Self, and since his own branch with its Upanishad supplies that in no long time, the resolve will surely arise. A third, the Marathi voice, also reads it as selection: though the Vedas preach volumes and many paths, the learned ponder them and adopt only what leads to enduring good, the eternal knowledge of the Supreme, just as one floods the field but takes only the water one needs.

Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Śuddhādvaita

This commentator reads the image as inclusion with a note on labor. An 'udapana' is a water-pot one drinks from. Whatever value lies in such a pot is fully present in a flooded reservoir, though there the labor of fetching and guarding is much greater. So whatever fruit-value of Vedic work lies in the Vedas, all of it lies in the brahmana who knows the form of Brahman and is fixed single-mindedly on Brahman, so there is no conflict with scripture. The supporting texts are the Taittiriya, 'the wise one knows the bliss of Brahman,' and the Shvetashvatara, 'knowing only Him one crosses beyond death.'

Śrī Puruṣottama

Advaita Vedānta

This commentator is unusual in recording both readings and putting the selective one first as his own. The objection he meets is that going beyond the three gunas seems to require performing the whole of Vedic ritual, which is impossible in one life. His primary answer is selective sufficiency: as a man takes from a small pool only what he needs for bathing or drinking and need not drain a whole flooded reservoir, so one with a well-formed intellect needs only what is gained by listening to a portion of the Veda, the Upanishad, for Brahman-knowledge, not the performance of the whole Veda; this can ripen in this or another birth, by repetition and the rest, once the mind is pure. He then reports that the elders take it inversely, as inclusion: as much fruit as comes from many wells, that is, from doing all Vedic rites, is gained from the one great flood, that is, Self-knowledge, since the lesser blisses are included in the bliss of Brahman; on this reading actions like a well are to be done until the Ganges-like flood of knowledge arises.

Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha

Modern

This commentator argues, against most other interpreters, for reading the image as superfluity rather than inclusion. He works the grammar so that no words need be silently supplied: to the extent that there is any use for a well when there is a flood of water everywhere, that is, none at all, to that same extent is there any use of the ritual portion of the Vedas for the enlightened brahmana, that is, none. When pure water can be had freely from a lake or river, no one even looks at a well. He marshals parallels, including the Mahabharata's Sanatsujatiya and Sukanuprasna and even a Pali verse, all making the same point: one who has crossed thirst has nothing further to acquire. He charges that other commentators twist the syntax, supplying 'tavan' in the first half and 'yavan' in the second, either because admitting the inferiority of the Vedas troubles them or because they want to protect the doctrine that knowledge already includes the performance of action. Crucially, though, he insists this superfluity is about the fruit, not about the duty: a knower has nothing new to gain from ritual, yet he must still perform sacrifice desirelessly as his prescribed duty, and may never simply abandon it.

Lokmanya Tilak

Modern

This commentator frames the verse as a careful balance. For the sage who has realized the Self, the Vedas are of no use, because he already possesses the infinite knowledge of the Self. But he is quick to add that this does not make the Vedas useless: they are genuinely useful for the neophyte and the aspirant who has just started on the path. The inclusion point is still affirmed, that all the transient pleasures from the proper performance of Vedic action are comprehended in the infinite bliss of Self-knowledge, but the practical takeaway is that the Veda's value is real and stage-dependent, full while one is still climbing, surpassed once the summit is reached.

Swami Sivananda

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator's note bears on the surrounding teaching rather than on the well-image directly, and he is careful to defend the Veda. The Vedas bind only in a special way, through the instrument of the three gunas; they are not binders in themselves. What binds is Vedic action done with a mind colored by pleasure, pain, and delusion, so it is that guna-shaped thing, having the form of desire, that is to be given up, not the Veda. He warns that if the verse were aimed at faulting the Veda outright, the very war at hand could not be justified, since nothing other than the Veda settles what one's own duty is. For those whose longing for fruit has fallen away, the Vedas simply do not bind.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhedabheda

This commentator's supplied gloss treats the neighboring verses rather than the well-image itself. He explains that the Vedas have the activity of the three gunas as their object, the setting in motion of worldly existence, where sattva is subordinate and rajas and tamas predominate; the person mastered by these two, acting for fruits here and hereafter, does not pass beyond the wheel of rebirth. The remedy is to be free of the three gunas: enduring the pairs of opposites such as pleasure and pain and cold and heat, ever abiding in sattva, taking hold of steadfastness, and free of acquisition (gaining what one lacks) and preservation (guarding what one has), since for one who strives after these the understanding is not resolute.

Śrī Bhāskara