Advaita Vedānta

The non-dual reading takes Krishna's supreme nature to be the pure, ever-free Self, identical with the innermost reality of every being. He is the eternally awake, free Self of all creatures, a dense mass of bliss, more inward even than space and the very source of space, free of all contact. The human form is a maya-form he assumes by his own will to grace his devotees, while his real being is the supreme Self that is the reader's own Self. The deluded fail because their inner organ is covered over by the error 'this is a man'; their non-discrimination is rooted in identifying the Lord with the body the way they identify themselves with their own bodies.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

On this reading Krishna's supreme nature is precisely the cluster of his perfections shining through the human form: his boundless compassion, generosity, gracious accessibility, and tender love. He is the great Lord of beings, all-knowing, of true resolve, the single cause of the whole world, and out of supreme compassion he resorts to manhood so that all might take refuge in him. The deluded, driven by their own sinful actions, hold him to be of the same kind as others merely because he resorts to manhood. The obstacle is a wrong appraisal that takes the appearing as the whole and misses the imperishable inner standing that the human descent is meant to make available.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Bhedabheda

This reading frames the contempt concretely: the deluded show disrespect thinking 'this is just a man of the warrior class named Vasudeva,' not knowing his higher being as the great Lord of beings. Such people are further marked as those of vain hopes, vain deeds, and vain knowledge, devoid of discernment, who have taken refuge in a deluding nature that is demonic and fiendish.

Śrī Bhāskara

Dvaita

This reading insists that Krishna's humanity is only an appearance in the eyes of the deluded, never a real human nature. The body merely 'appears as if human'; it does not actually have a human form, and the descents are not separate, doubtful things. Scriptural support is marshalled to show that all embodied things are pervaded by the five elements born of the Lord's will, so bodies could never bind him who is their maker. The descent-forms, including the boar, the man-lion, the dwarf, and the human, were apportioned at the very time of the first creation, before human birth even arose. The phrase 'great Lord of beings' is read as 'the great Lord who is himself a being,' beginningless, endless, of wholly full form, infinite in time, space, and qualities; even the boon-giving gods are his and subject to him.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

This reading refuses any split between Krishna's body and his self. The 'body resorted to' must be read as his very own form, the human shape made of pure bliss alone, with hands, feet, face, and belly, free of any material shape; to take it otherwise would introduce a forbidden duality. He is one only, of the form of bliss, self everywhere free of internal division, the supreme bhava whose essence is the Highest Person (Purushottama). The fools, of demonic stamp and brought forth by his very own will, know that blissful form only as a human shape bearing maya, and so set him at nought through their own unknowing. Scripture and direct experience, 'with eye turned inward,' 'bliss is the form of Brahman,' are cited to confirm that his form is wholly non-material.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This reading puts the contempt as a denial that flows from a limited way of perceiving. Krishna, who lies within all people as the very self of all, becomes an object of contempt because the deluded reason that, since no Lord can be perceived apart from the fourteenfold creation of the human and the rest, there can be no such Lord at all. Their error is to make perceptibility within the created order the measure of existence.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

The devotional reading holds that Krishna's human-looking body is itself made of being, consciousness, and bliss (sat-chit-ananda), pure goodness, and so is not different from him at all: he is the very body, and the body is he, directly Brahman. The deluded see only the outward shape and miss the divine lordship (aishvarya) within it, dismissing what they cannot recognize. This body, though it looks like the son of Vasudeva, is more excellent even than the great Person lying upon the ocean of cause; revealed and remembered texts are cited ('the Supreme Brahman in human form'; Govinda 'whose form is being, consciousness, and bliss'), and its pervasion of all universes was seen in his childhood by his mother. The two-armed and four-armed forms are simultaneously real, like the many forms at once in a cat's-eye gem, and supreme lordship lies not in the number of arms but in being the all-pervading conscious cause of the world. Through extended images, the seeker who clings to the visible form alone is shown chasing a reflection of the moon in water, mistaking foam for water and a mirage for the Ganga, and so imputing birth, death, name, caste, limbs, and limits to one who is beyond them all.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

The modern voices stress the practical psychology of the error and what right seeing would be. Fools find fault with his pure nature the way a jaundiced eye sees everything as yellow or a fevered tongue tastes milk as bitter; those who try to behold him with the physical eyes alone cannot know him, as one who takes a mirage for the Ganga finds no water there. They take him for an ordinary mortal, while the wise know both his transcendent nature and the glory of his manifestation. One voice frames the contempt as outright denial of God, refusing to recognize the Director within the human body. Another spells out what mistaking him for a man really means: treating him as ordinary people treat themselves, as dependent on body, family, wealth, and position, feeling big when they gain these and small when they lose them, and so failing to know him as wholly free, never bound by action or affliction, beyond the perishable and even above the imperishable, famed in scripture as the Highest Person.

Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas