Advaita Vedānta

These commentators identify the Lord's prakriti with maya, the indefinable power that veils and projects, marked by nescience, ignorance of the truth. The creation is read as an appearance rather than a real transformation of the Lord. One develops this fully: the Lord, who is mere consciousness and the witness of all, has no need to create for his own enjoyment, for he has no enjoyership; there is no other conscious being for whose sake he could create; and creation is not even for the sake of release, since at the deepest level there is no real bondage. So the whole display is shown to be of the nature of maya, false like a magician's trick or a dreamer's dream, brought forth by mere imagining and firmed up only by the Lord's being and shining. The point of the verse, on this reading, is to establish the maya-nature of the cosmos so that it raises no objection against the Lord's true actionless nature. The Lord 'creates' only as the unchanging substrate; the world's seeming reality rests on him as a dream rests on the dreamer.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Here prakriti is real, not an illusion. It is the Lord's own nature that genuinely transforms, going through its eightfold modification, and the Lord truly employs it as his instrument. The careful distinction these commentators draw is that the Lord is the karta, the real agent or doer of the cosmic process, while prakriti is the karana, the instrument or tool through which he works. The word 'holding' marks his active use of prakriti; prakriti is not autonomous. The beings are helpless in respect of their own efforts, but it is the Lord who holds and projects them through his deluding, quality-made nature. The verse is thus read as the doctrinal anchor fixing the Lord as the true cause who really creates a real world by really using a real prakriti.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Bhedabheda

This commentator gives a spare, mechanism-focused reading. The Lord takes the support of his own material nature and sends forth the beings; their helplessness is dependence under prakriti's control. The distinctive emphasis is the tight link to past works: in accordance with the living beings' prior deeds, material nature transforms itself, and it is under that karma-shaped transformation of nature that the Lord sends them forth. Creation is real and follows the prior karma of the beings through the medium of a really transforming nature.

Śrī Bhāskara

Dvaita

These commentators are emphatic that the Lord's 'leaning on prakriti' implies no lack of power in him. The image given is of a man fully able to walk on his own feet who nonetheless walks in play leaning on a staff; the Lord rests on prakriti as sport, not from need. A wide range of scriptural citations is marshaled to show that the Lord is complete in all power, of endless forms and qualities, and that nowhere is his power hindered; mounting maya by his own free choice, he engages in creation and dissolution. They also guard against the misreading that 'I send forth by the power of prakriti' makes the Lord's agency a mere product of nescience while he is truly actionless. On the contrary, the Lord is the genuine doer who really creates, sustains, and devours this world, which is itself helpless and under the sway of maya.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

For these commentators prakriti is the Lord's own being in its 'sat,' existence aspect, identical with his yoga-shakti, his own divine power, and called maya only because it bewilders through the gunas. One commentator develops a striking image: the Lord, taking the form of purusha, holds prakriti firmly and as it were accepts her as a wife by his look, or draws near to gaze upon her, and so sends forth the dissolved company of beings through the various prajapatis. The whole self-division through prakriti is wrought by the Lord alone of his own free will, by no other. The second commentator adds that this prakriti is uncommon, her very nature delight, and the beings are sent forth as fit for the Lord's play and his darshana, his being beheld; even for those brought forth into the world, the form of bliss alone abides. Creation is the Lord's free, joyous play, and its inmost essence remains delight.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This brief comment draws out one specific point from the words 'resting on My own prakriti.' The host of beings is in itself insentient, lacking awareness; yet through its connection with the higher prakriti it reaches the state of being lit up, that is, of becoming conscious or illumined. The verse, on this reading, marks how the inert mass of beings comes to share in light and life by being joined to the Lord's own higher nature.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These commentators answer the puzzle of how the Lord, who is unattached and changeless, can create at all. Their shared solution is that he creates as the un-acting overseer or presider: he holds and rules prakriti, but the engine that actually turns is the beings' own karmic momentum and prakriti's force, so no action and no taint touch him. One stresses that the Lord, of unattached nature and inconceivable potency, accomplishes everything by mere will, with not the slightest contact or weariness. Another, in extended poetic images, likens him to a king who rules while subjects toil, to the moon that lifts the tide without drudgery, to a magnet that moves iron without being affected, and to a lamp that lights a house without prompting or preventing any deed; prakriti is the warp and woof, the milk that clots into curd, the seed that swells into a tree, and the Lord is the unconcerned witness through whom all this has its being yet who is never reached by its action.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

The modern commentators stay close to the plain mechanism while drawing out specific senses of prakriti. One reads avashtabhya warmly as the Lord leaning on, pressing, or embracing Nature: he invigorates and fertilizes Nature, which had gone to sleep at the cosmic dissolution, gazes at each level, and brings plane after plane into being; and he glosses prakriti as the five afflictions, ignorance, egoism, likes, dislikes, and clinging to life. Another reads avasha simply as the beings' being bound by their respective karma under prakriti. A third specifies prakriti here as vyashti prakriti, each being's individual nature or causal body, and gives a detailed account of how at the great dissolution every being dissolves stage by stage into the supreme, and at the new creation the jivas' karmas turn ripe, the Lord's will to 'become many' stirs a disturbance in cosmic prakriti, the three gunas and the three worlds emerge, and beings are born high or low according to their guna, karma, and innate disposition.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas