Advaita Vedānta

These commentators take the gods straightforwardly as Indra and the other presiding deities, and the nourishing as literal sacrifice answered by rain and food. Their distinctive move is to read 'the highest good' as an option that splits by the aspirant's aim: the seeker of enjoyment gains heaven, while the seeker of liberation, through this same selfless action gradually ripening into knowledge of the Self, gains release from birth and death. One raises the objection directly: without the gods' favour no heavenly prosperity is won, and without right vision the highest good cannot be reached at all, so the verse must allow both fruits depending on the doer's motive.

Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Swami Sivananda

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Here the gods 'have Me for their inner self and are My body'; worshipping them is really worshipping the Lord, who declares himself the enjoyer and lord of all sacrifices. This school works hardest at the mechanism. It answers a chain of objections: that growth cannot come from sacrifice (reply: worship itself is the worshipper's enhancement); that a momentary act cannot yield a later fruit (reply: the deity's pleasure becomes an unseen potency, apurva, that ripens into the fruit, and even in cosmic dissolution the supreme deity preserves it); that scripture says there is 'no other path' to release than knowledge (reply: sacrifice causes release only indirectly, as a component supporting knowledge); and that the worldly pleasures of heaven do not fit a liberation-seeker's path (reply: worship of the deity is also worship of the inner Lord). The qualifier 'highest' (paramam) is read as marking off liberation from heaven.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Bhedabheda

This reading keeps the literal cycle: nourish the gods with their portion, and they, Indra and the rest, nourish you with rain and abundance. Like the Advaitins it splits the fruit by desire, those who want heaven gain heaven and those who want release gain release. It then sharpens the verse's ethical edge by adding the warning that follows: the gods gratified by sacrifice give the desired enjoyments, but one who enjoys their gifts without offering back is simply a thief. The reciprocity is thus not optional courtesy but a debt that must be repaid.

Śrī Bhāskara

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the gods as the deities presiding over the various works, and the offering as increasing divinity in them so that they in turn increase in you the very instruments by which works are done. The decisive point is that the natural reciprocity is itself an arrangement of Bhagavan: the Lord, indwelling as the form of the deity, meets the worshipper through every act rightly offered. One treats this verse and the one before it as a single continuous passage whose full unfolding stands at the earlier verse.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This is the most strikingly inward reading. Even one whose chief aim is release should 'serve the objects.' The 'gods' are taken as the operations of the senses, the goddesses of the senses known in the secret scriptures. 'Gladden them by this action' means: enjoy sense-objects as far as is fitting. Being gladdened, the senses in turn gladden you with releases that befit the self's own nature, since their true nature is the yoga of abiding in oneself. In the ceaseless rhythm of emergence and absorption, this mutual fostering, marked by the gladdening of the senses and the coming-to-be of the self, swiftly reaches the supreme good, Brahman, whose mark is the melting-away of all mutual difference.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These devotional commentators keep the cycle of offering and rain, but several deepen 'nourish' into affection. One glosses bhavayata as making the gods loving and filled with loving regard, gladdening them, so the relation becomes warm rather than merely transactional. One reads the verse through following one's own dharma: when you live your religion, the deities are propitiated, supply your livelihood, and reciprocal affection grows until your every aim succeeds. Another grounds the 'highest good' in purity of food: the gods nourish you with pure food, which is a limb of steadfast knowledge, since (as the Sruti says) pure food purifies the inner being, firms the memory, and loosens all the knots that bind.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

The modern commentators draw out the verse's ethical and cosmic sense. One renders the mutual giving as pleasing one another into prosperity, with both sides attaining the highest benefit. One reads it as a refusal of one-sided extraction: each god presides over a kind of action, your share of the offering increases the god's capacity to bless the world, and in return you are granted the means for the next round of action, so the deeper teaching is that the world is an order of mutual giving in which the human being should take his place as a giver, not a hoarder. One notes that deva means 'the shining one' and that the highest good may mean either knowledge of the Self that frees from rebirth or the attainment of heaven, the fruit depending on the aspirant's motive.

Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda