Advaita Vedānta

These commentators keep the reading plain and grammatical. 'Papa-yoni' means a birth that results from past sin; the named groups are unqualified by birth and by lack of Vedic study, yet by refuge in the Lord they reach the supreme course. One spells out a traditional rationale for the social ranking: women and shudras are denied Vedic study and take such birth through accumulated past sin, while vaishyas are former brahmanas or kshatriyas who fell to that birth through sinful action. One also rejects a variant reading that adds 'or even worse outcastes' as redundant, and reads the address 'Partha' as a gentle hint that Arjuna, being of higher caste and the Lord's own kinsman, is all the more secure.

Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Here the stress falls on the universal availability of refuge (prapatti) as a path open to every varna and jati. The Lord's grace is not restricted by birth-status; the candidate of any class, if he takes refuge, reaches the supreme destination, and that destination is identical to the brahmana's, not a diminished one. The verse 'breaks the door open,' and the following verse draws the natural inference about righteous brahmanas and royal-sage devotees, the two verses converging on the single imperative 'worship me' precisely because this world is transient and joyless.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Bhedabheda

This commentator reads the verse through the lens of doing one's own prescribed work as worship. The sin-born and the lowly attain by the destruction of sin that comes from carrying out their own duty, which itself amounts to fulfilling the Lord's command; contact with him purifies as fire purifies iron. He notably glosses the 'supreme goal' as the goal of heaven. Even a shudra has work natural to him, namely attending and serving, and by that very service of waiting upon the Lord he accomplishes the human aim, since worship is enjoined through one's own work itself.

Śrī Bhāskara

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the verse against the Bhagavata, naming concrete examples of the means-less who reached him: the gopis (women possessed of pure feeling alone, with no twice-born sacrament, no guru, no austerity, no self-inquiry), vaishyas like Tuladhara, Vraja-dwellers like Nanda, shudras like Vidura, and the low-born Hunas, Yavanas, Shabaras and Pulindas. The point is that they had no formal means at all, yet 'by mere feeling' (bhava) and mere taking of refuge in the Lord, who is the ocean of parental tenderness and purifier of the deeply fallen, they reach the highest goal. One reads the present-tense 'reach' as covering both those who have already reached and those now reaching, and answers an objection that this would create grades among devotees by insisting refuge alone, in a particular dedicated way, suffices.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator gives the widest gloss of 'papa-yoni' (beasts, birds, creeping things) and reads 'women' as the unlearned and 'shudras' as those whose life depends on others, all of whom, taking refuge, worship him alone. He cites the rescue of the lord of elephants as proof of the Lord's boundless compassion. He then mounts a sharp polemic against those who try to read the verse merely as praise of the twice-born and kshatriya, denying that release is truly available to women and the rest: such readers, he says, shrink the Lord's all-favouring power by measuring its field, cannot bear his supreme compassion, force a mark of difference into the non-dual truth, set scriptural statements at war with one another, and end up exposing themselves as idle babblers gripped by caste-pride. The plain, all-inclusive sense, he holds, works the welfare of all.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These commentators read devotion itself as a purifying power that does not count either incidental faults of conduct or the natural faults of low birth. They marshal Bhagavata verses: that Kiratas, Hunas, Andhras, Pulindas and all manner of sinful ones become pure when they take refuge in those who have taken refuge in him, and that even a dog-eater on whose tongue rests his Name surpasses the noble Veda-reciter. One frames the verse as a bold public vow Krishna would have Arjuna proclaim. Jnaneshwari develops it at length with vivid images: rivers lose their separate, impure names once they join the Ganges or merge in the sea; iron turns to gold at the touch of the philosopher's stone; sandalwood and catechu are distinct only until fire consumes them. So caste, race, family and sex are real distinctions only until the soul is absorbed into his being. By whatever channel the soul is drawn (devotion like Prahlada's, the gopis' love, even Kamsa's fear or Shishupala's hatred), once it enters his eternal life it becomes one with him; love or devotion is the one true crucible, and birth is 'the merest trash.'

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators read the verse as a plain charter of spiritual equality: Hinduism restricts salvation to no group, and all can attain God if they have devotion. One piles up examples (Gajendra the elephant, Prahlada the demon, the gopis, Kamsa and Ravana through fear, Shishupala through hatred, and later saints like Nandanar, Raidas the cobbler, and Shabari the tribal woman) to show that in the spiritual sphere all distinctions of caste, colour and creed fall away. One grounds the openness in metaphysics: because the individual self is a part (amsha) of the Lord, it is never unqualified to walk toward him; fitness and unfitness belong only to worldly transactions, which are external and come and go, whereas in forging relationship with the Lord no such fitness is required, for all beings are his own and whoever longs for him from the heart is qualified for his devotion.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas