The perishable world, the cosmic Person, and the Lord of sacrifice in this very body: all of them are His.

Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the verse as collapsing the six heads into the one non-dual reality. The adhibhuta is the perishable effect; the adhidaiva is Hiranyagarbha, the collective subtle-body self within the sun; the adhiyajna is Vishnu, who is Vasudeva alone 'and not anyone different from me,' and so to be understood as in no way different from the supreme Brahman. The clause 'in this body' settles a doubt these commentators raise explicitly: is the Lord in the body or outside it, and if in the body, is He the intellect and the rest or distinct from them? The answer is that He abides in the body in the form of sacrifice, distinct from the intellect and senses, because the sacrifice is accomplished by the body. The address 'best of the embodied' is read as the Lord's encouragement: by conversing with Him at every moment Arjuna has become a fit vessel for this teaching.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators read the verse against the frame of the 'seekers of lordship' (aishvarya-arthins), the qualified worshippers who pursue these as objects of knowledge and meditation. The adhibhuta is the perishable transformation present in the elements, the distinctive sound, touch, form, taste, and smell together with their substrata, to be attained and dwelt on by such seekers. The adhidaiva is the Person who presides over the whole host of deities (Indra, Prajapati) and is the enjoyer of those sense-objects, distinct from what they enjoy; that enjoyer-state too is to be meditated on. The adhiyajna is the Lord Himself, abiding as the self in Indra and the rest 'who are My body,' the antaryamin, the inner-ruler who is the one to be worshipped by sacrifices; this is what all the qualified ones must dwell on while performing the obligatory and occasional rites. One source carefully notes that only the death-time-remembrance question now remains for the next verse.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

These commentators stress that the categories remain real and that even the unmanifest (avyakta) is included under adhibhuta, since it too undergoes 'becoming-otherwise,' a return to equilibrium, citing scriptural texts that the unmanifest is a born modification; this guards against the answer being too narrow. The Person here is identified as the living being, namely Sankarshana or Brahma, lord of the gods and so adhidaiva. Crucially, these commentators handle the apparent tension that in the previous chapter the Lord spoke of being known 'together with the adhiyajna,' which suggests a difference: the togetherness is stated only with reference to a particular form, and to remove the inference that the adhiyajna is other than the Lord, the qualifier 'in the body' is used. The word 'here' sets apart the Lord's own body from the bodies of all living beings in which He governs as adhiyajna. They marshal a long chain of scriptural citations (Gita 5.29, 9.20, 9.23, Brihadaranyaka 3.8.9, the Gita-kalpa, Skanda, Maha-kaurma) to establish that the Brahman spoken of is not other than the Lord and that the Lord is the enjoyer of all sacrifice and giver of its fruit.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

One of these commentators reads the heads through the inner-ruler and devotional frame: purusha as the jiva taken as atman, the common substrate and enjoyer of all faculties, the single inner ruler everywhere reachable, to be contemplated by those who know the Purushottama; and the Lord as the Paramatman-form to be propitiated by sacrifices, standing as inner ruler in the bodies of all beings, with the address praising Arjuna's candidacy as an inquirer who has come, body and all, to ask. The other reads the verse through the bhakti theology of love-in-separation (rasa): the perishable body is adhibhuta because it is brought forth as a portion of the Lord for the sake of servitude, so that the very heat of separation from Bhagavan may be enacted in it; the purusha is the disposition of 'rasa' standing within the heart of the jiva, the play-bearing root-form, which is adhidaiva; and the adhiyajna is of the nature of the action of sacrifice and what sets it in motion, performed here in the body for the increase of what serves the Lord. The reader fitted with the capacity that subserves the Lord's service is the 'best of the embodied.'

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhedabheda

This commentator gives the standard identifications, the perishable being as adhibhuta, Hiranyagarbha within the sun's orb as adhidaiva, and the Lord Himself as adhiyajna on the authority of 'Sacrifice indeed is Vishnu,' and adds a precise note on what the offering is: the mental act of relinquishment, 'this is not mine but the deity's,' is the offering, and of all sacrifices of substance, of knowledge, and of scriptural study, the Lord is the presiding deity. He explicitly rejects an alternative reading that would tie 'body' to the instrument of an oblation in the Vaisvanara rite, on two grounds: a particular sacrifice has already been treated, so sacrifice in general is the fitting topic here; and since the previous verse used the word 'emission' (visarga), the explanation in terms of creation (sarga), not a specific rite, is the fitting one.

Śrī Bhāskara

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator reads the verse with the greatest economy and an emphasis on the Self. The adhibhuta is the perishable, whatever flows away and decays by transformation, the whole array of objects like the pot. The purusha is the self, and that self is adhidaiva 'since all the divinities come to rest in it.' And just for that reason the supreme Person, who as the enjoyer of every sacrifice presides over the sacrifices (the actions that must be done), is none other than 'I,' who alone dwell within the body. He notes pointedly that two of the questions are settled with a single effort, reading the verse as a swift movement from the perishable object, through the self in which the deities rest, to the one Lord within.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These commentators identify adhibhuta as the perishable object (a pot or cloth), adhidaiva as the Viraj or cosmic Person in whom the deities abide, and adhiyajna as the Lord as antaryamin, the inner-controller who prompts sacrifice and bestows its fruit. Two of them stress that 'I alone' (eva) sets aside any difference: the inner controller is non-different from the Lord and is a portion of Him, and is not to be known as something separate, unlike the adhyatma and the rest. One adds a practical corollary: through worship and service of the Lord's image one obtains all these seven topics in their true form without strenuous effort, and among them Brahman and the adhiyajna are to be attained while the adhyatma and the rest are to be discarded. The most expansive of these draws the non-dual conclusion through vivid images (the crystal slab that only seemed cracked because of the hair-combings under it, the pure gold that is never really part of the alloy): so long as their true being is hidden by Prakriti-Maya, adhibhuta and the rest are held separate from the pure Brahman, but with the removal of ignorance they melt into one with the Supreme, which is the Adhiyajna, the Lord's own self; and the verse is closed with a contemplative description of inner sacrifice and the burning of all into the fire of knowledge.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators converge on the standard identifications and the unifying point but differ in emphasis. One simply glosses the three terms: the perishable nature, Hiranyagarbha or the universal soul and witnessing consciousness, and the Lord (Vishnu) as the presiding deity in all acts of sacrifice in the body. One draws the ethical moral: since everything from the imperishable unmanifest to the perishable atom is the Supreme, mortal man should not arrogate authorship of anything but do His bidding and dedicate all action to Him. One reads the whole verse as a Vedantic declaration of one Atman in all bodies against the Samkhya plurality of selves: 'I am the adhideha' shows there is only one Paramatman, and however many distinctions (adhibhuta, adhidaiva, adhyatma, adhiyajna, adhideha) are made for worship, the diversity is not real and there is only one Paramesvara pervading everything. The fourth gives the fullest treatment: he stresses that 'I myself am the adhiyajna in this body' means the Lord is present as antaryami in the heart of all (citing 13.17, 15.15, 18.61), and that the human body uniquely makes fresh karma, with the antaryami as the prompter of action, binding when done under raga-dvesha and freeing when done in keeping with His prompting; he never prompts forbidden karma, since shruti and smriti are His own command. He maps the six heads onto a threefold scheme (Paramatma as Brahman/adhiyajna, jiva as adhyatma/adhidaiva, samsara as karma/adhibhuta) and onto a single water-principle taking the forms of paramanu, vapour, cloud, rain, drops, and hail, to teach that the apparent many is in tattva one paramatma alone.

Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas