Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the second sacrifice as the knowledge-sacrifice of non-dual realization. The 'Brahman-fire' is Brahman as pure being, consciousness, and bliss, set apart by the scriptural method of 'not this, not this' and free of every mark of transmigration such as hunger. What is offered is the self, which in highest truth is Brahman itself but appears as a limited individual because it is joined with the adjuncts of intellect and the rest and bears their superimposed qualities. The act of offering is the vision that this adjunct-joined self is the adjunct-free supreme Brahman. There is no real difference between the offered self and the fire of Brahman to begin with; the word 'only' (eva) is read by one of these voices as warding off both difference and the difference-and-non-difference view, since the offering is made through pure non-difference, seeing the self as Brahman's very nature. The conditioned self is dissolved into the unconditioned Self, like the space in a pot merging into the open sky when the pot's walls are removed. This is the renunciant's offering, the steadfast vision of the oneness of self and Brahman, and it is the highest sacrifice of all.

Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri

Bhedabheda

This commentator agrees that Brahman itself is the fire and that what is offered is one's own self, but he is careful to specify which 'self' is meant: it is the inner organ, the inner instrument of cognition, not the individual living being as such. Whatever knowable thing this inner organ knows is a 'sacrifice,' so a word denoting the self is here used in the sense of 'sacrifice.' The offering is made by the self drawn near to the supreme Self, accomplished with the mind, and what is meant is the unification of Brahman and the self. This voice also notes that knowledge can arise even in the state of being a god, citing a revealed text that whoever among the gods, seers, or men awakened to this became that very Brahman.

Śrī Bhāskara

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators reject the inner self-dissolution reading and keep the verse within the discipline of action as a description of literal ritual sacrifice. The 'sacrifice' that is offered is the physical oblation, the clarified butter and other substances, which has Brahman for its self; the 'sacrifice' by which it is offered is the means of sacrifice, the ladle and the other implements. So the word 'sacrifice' is used in two senses, for the oblation and for the instruments, by the principle that 'the offering is Brahman, the oblation is Brahman.' The worshipper makes his standing in the offering and the oblation themselves. One of these voices works through the grammar in detail, explaining that since the form of the sacrifice and the supreme Self cannot be literally placed in a fire, the word 'sacrifice' must shift by indication to mean the oblation in one place and the ladle in another; he sets aside as too strained both the reading that offers the individual soul or the unseen merit (apurva) into a Brahman-fire and the reading that makes this a purely mental sacrifice, since neither fits this section on the discipline of action.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

For these commentators the verse is throughout about worship of the Lord, not the worship of lesser deities or the dissolution of the self. The 'divine' (daiva) is the Lord himself, and he alone is the sacrifice of these worshippers, who have nothing else; the worship of the Lord, in the sense of sacrifice, is an adverbial qualifier of the act. They support this with scriptural lines such as 'by sacrifice the sacrifice' and 'sacrifice is Vishnu, the deity,' and with the account of Brahma worshipping Vishnu in the sacrifice of the mind. One of these voices argues explicitly against reading 'divine' as merely 'pertaining to the gods,' because that would simply repeat the 'sacrifices of substance' named later in the chapter, and against the Advaita reading that 'they make the self one with the self by mind or by Brahman.' He stresses that the word 'sacrifice' here denotes the Lord, and that the construction is a single sentence showing these terms are adverbial qualifiers of the worshipping activity.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the difference of sacrifices as a difference of qualification among worshippers, with each sacrifice held within the Lord's own self-offering. The yoga-karmi yogi worships this or that deity; the brahma-vadi jnani offers into the fire of Brahman by the Brahman that has been cultivated, by which the sacrifice itself is dissolved. One of these voices frames the whole passage as answering why work does not instantly dissolve into Brahman the way a thing dissolves on contact with fire: fire burns only when joined with its own kind in mass, not as a stray spark, so the fruit comes only in measure with the knowledge one actually has. He reads the lower worshippers as doers of work who long for fruit and worship with full feeling, gaining worldly pleasure; the higher worshippers know the fire as Brahman's own form and offer into that Brahman-fire the 'sacrifice' that is Vishnu, who is the very form of sacrifice, with an oblation that is itself the Vishnu-form.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator first reports an interpretation in which the yogins, resting on the divine senses and given to play, worship on every side the sacrifice 'whose mark is the seizing of its own object,' and by considering it from the root they gain their own self; on this reading the suffix in 'yogins' means a constant joining in yoga through all states, and others offer this same object-seizing sacrifice, by that very sacrifice, into the Brahman-fire 'that cannot be filled.' But because the sage's text should be consistent from first to last, he then makes plain the meaning he takes to lie in the author's heart: some, joined with yoga, perform a sacrifice of outer substances with the various deities, Indra and the rest, in view; and others offer that same sacrifice, even as it is being done, into the hard-to-fill Brahman-fire with the attitude 'this is simply to be done,' without regard for fruit. So even the sacrificers by substance reach the supreme Brahman, since it will be said that 'all these too are knowers of sacrifice,' and scripture says 'by sacrifice the gods sacrificed the sacrifice.'

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These commentators agree that the first sacrifice is the karma-yogins' worship of the gods, and they note that 'eva' hints that in Indra and the rest there is no superimposed sense that they are Brahman. But they differ among themselves on the second sacrifice. One reads it as the knowledge-sacrifice of seeing Brahman everywhere, the foremost of all sacrifices because every other sacrifice is a means to reach it, in which all karmas dissolve away in the manner declared by 'the offering is Brahman.' Another keeps the Vaishnava ritual sense like the Vishishtadvaita reading: the jnana-yogi offers the oblation of clarified butter and the like, by the ladle and the rest, into the fire that has become Brahman, making his steadfastness in the offering alone. A third reads the offering with explicit devotional machinery: the soul standing as the oblation (the 'thou' referent) is offered into Brahman, the supreme Self (the 'that' referent), by sacrifice in the form of the sacred syllable Om; by a figure of speech the words 'sacrifice' and 'by sacrifice' point to the pure soul and to Om.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These voices read the verse in distinct registers. One follows the Advaita line closely: the karma-yogis perform rites to the gods, while the wisdom-sacrifice offers the Self into Brahman, sublating the limiting adjuncts of body, mind, and intellect so that the individual soul is known by direct cognition to be identical with Brahman, the highest sacrifice of all. Another reads the second half through the hymn of the cosmic Person (Purusha-Sukta), where the gods offered a sacrifice to the sacrifice-formed cosmic Person; he treats the verse's 'they offer the sacrifice by sacrifice' as synonymous with the Vedic line 'by sacrifice the gods sacrificed the sacrifice,' and concludes that since Brahman continually pervades all things, performing all actions desirelessly is, scientifically speaking, Brahman being sacrificed by Brahman, provided the mind has been formed accordingly. A third gives a non-sectarian devotional reading: the first 'daiva-yajna' is taking every act and object as not one's own and not for oneself but as wholly belonging to the Lord, the God of gods, offered to him without the least attachment, possessiveness, or desire; and the second sacrifice is turning away from inert matter by discernment and becoming absorbed in the supreme, the soul having no separate, independent existence apart from the supreme reality.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas