Advaita Vedānta

On this reading the 'rule' that is missing is the knowledge of non-difference: the realization that all this is Vasudeva, that there is no thing apart from the one self. 'Not by the rule' simply means ignorance; the worshipper proceeds with that ignorance going before. The deities are not other realities at all. The supreme Self itself stands in the form of each deity, so to imagine the Vasus, Rudras and Adityas as different from the one self is the whole defect. These commentators take 'rule' to be 'the non-difference-intellect', and they read the verse as teaching that worship without that recognition of oneness, even when sincere, leaves the worshipper short of release.

Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Here the gods are real beings, but they are the body of the supreme Person, who is their inner self (antaryamin). So when the Veda enjoins worship of Indra and the rest in the rites, it is in truth enjoining worship of the supreme Person who indwells them, since the very words 'Indra' and so on finally denote him. The Vedanta-texts, such as the line about the four priests coming to a meeting with the gods, point to this: the rites reach the Lord because the gods who receive them have him for their self. The men of the threefold ritual knowledge fail to grasp that these rites are really worship of the supreme Person and that he alone is to be worshipped; lacking this, they sacrifice 'not in the prescribed way', and so they win only bounded, perishing fruit. The defect is not seeing the body-soul relation between the gods and the Lord.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

These commentators read the verse mainly to protect the earlier claim that the Lord is everywhere the enjoyer of sacrifice ('I am the rite'). The concern is logical: the fruit of any rite exists for the sake of the Lord's enjoyment. If that enjoyment were equal everywhere, the fruit would have to be equal for everyone, which is plainly not the case; and if the Lord were not the enjoyer of the worship of other gods at all, then the earlier statement that he is the enjoyer everywhere would be false. So the verse confirms that even worship of other deities is finally received by the Lord, vindicating his being the universal enjoyer, while still allowing for the difference in result. The verse is read as laying open the intent behind the original question.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators hold that the gods are portions or limbs of the Lord, so worship of them is worship of him. Vallabha situates this concretely in the pancayatana-puja, the worship of the five deities (Ravi, Vinayaka, Candi, Isha and Vishnu) in due order, citing the warning that worshipping them in the wrong order brings great fear; the right way is to meditate on the Lord as Brahman within them. He also offers the alternative that, since the Lord is the root of the gods, to abandon the root and water the branches and leaves is itself 'without ordinance'. Purushottama presses the further point that because the worshipper takes the gods as independent presiders without knowing them as the Lord's portions, the Lord shows no grace (kripa) to such worship, and its fruit is merely perishable enjoyment of the very measure of the worship. He adds the smriti warning that what is done without rule, with corrupt feeling and without faith, is carried off by the asuras.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhedabheda

This reading keeps the plain force of the verse: those who worship other deities with faith are honoring them, and in reality they worship the Lord alone. But 'not in the prescribed manner' is glossed two ways together: their worship is devoid of the procedure of the path of liberation, and it is also not in the manner laid down in the ritual manuals. In short, they do not know the rule. The reason for their fall is then given directly from the next verse: the Lord is the enjoyer and lord of all sacrifices, but because they do not know him in truth, they fall.

Śrī Bhāskara

Kashmir Shaivism

Abhinavagupta gives the verse its most developed treatment and explicitly weighs two ways of reading 'avidhi'. His preferred sense is that 'not by the rule' means 'by another rule': by rules of many kinds it is still the one Brahman who is worshipped, since nothing stands apart from Brahman to be worshipped at all. He sharply rejects the reading of rival schools that takes 'not by the rule' to mean 'by a corrupt rule', arguing that this would make Krishna's plain words ('they worship Me alone, and of all sacrifices I am the enjoyer') incoherent. Yet he also reports his own teachers' view, which does take 'avidhi' as 'a corrupt rule' whose form is the grasping of difference, the worshipper treating a divinity as other than his own self. His deepest point is grammatical and metaphysical at once: a divinity distinct from oneself must be 'designated' by a rule, because a rule brings about what is not yet attained; but one's own self, the supreme Lord, cannot be brought about by any rule, so worship of the self is 'with no rule before it'. The self shines as the wall on which every designated divinity appears, like the thread within a garland, constantly present as 'I, I'. Hence for one who knows this, even a sacrifice to Indra is a sacrifice to the supreme Lord; for one who does not, the fruit is merely a measured fee, like that paid to a sacrificing priest, never the great ocean of the self's own bliss.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These commentators read the verse as resolving why sincere worshippers of the gods still return to the world. They concede fully that since there is no deity truly apart from the Lord, such worshippers are indeed his devotees and do worship him alone. But 'avidhi-purvakam' means without the procedure that leads to attaining him; the worshippers, being devoted to Indra and the rest as bestowers of fruit, miss the right method and so come back again. Vishvanatha ties this to the chapter's earlier teaching of a threefold worship and the universal-form, explaining that the rite-workers and god-devotees are his devotees yet are not liberated because their worship is not the direct path. Jnaneshwari develops the root-and-branches image vividly: the sacrifices to Fire, Indra, Sun and Moon do come to the Lord since he is the whole universe, but this is a crooked, uneven path; just as one cannot feed the ears or tie flowers over the eyes but must taste food with the mouth and scent with the nose, one must worship the Lord in his true and entire being, with clear vision of knowledge, or the effort is fruitless.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

The modern commentators stress the universality of the principle and the precise nature of the defect. Sivananda repeats the root-and-tree image: satisfy the root and the whole tree is satisfied; worshippers of Agni, Indra, Surya, Varuna and the Vasus do attain the Lord because he is everywhere, but their devotion is impure and vicarious, and they should learn to recognize him as the Self in all beings and in all worship. Gandhi-Desai compresses the flaw to a single phrase: 'not according to the rule' means not knowing the Lord as the Impersonal and the Absolute. Tilak reads the verse as an ancient Vedic principle, citing the Rig-Veda ('the One the sages call by many names, Agni, Yama, Matarisva') and Mahabharata passages that even worshippers of Brahma, Shiva or other deities, and those who honor ancestors, preceptors, guests, cows and the earth, indirectly worship Vishnu alone; he draws the practical lesson that devotion is the principal factor and the deity-symbol secondary, and chides sectarian quarreling. Ramsukhdas, writing as non-sectarian devotional Vedanta, gives the most generous turn: 'avidhi' here does not mean ignorance of materials, mantra or manner of worship, but only holding the Lord as separate from the gods; if there is no desire (kamana) at all and the divine attitude (bhagavad-buddhi) rests in the chosen object, then according to one's taste any being, human or god, may be worshipped, and that worship is of itself worship of the Lord with the Lord himself as its fruit. The gain to the worshipper, he adds, is always according to his own inner attitude (bhavana).

Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas