Gita : Ch-9. Slo-19.

Srimad Bhagavad-Gita :


Chapter-9. ( Raja-vidya-raja-guhya-yogam )


Slokam-19.  ( O Arjuna, I control heat, the rain and the drought. I am immortality, and I am also death personified. Both being and nonbeing are in Me. )


tapamyahamaham   varsham   nigrhnamyutsajami   ca,


amrtam   caiva   mrtyusca    sadasaccahamarjuna.


arjuna  =  hey  arjuna;

aham  tapami  =  I  (  to  the  world  )   give  heat;

aham   varsham  nigrhnami  =  I  withhold  rain;

utsajami   ca  =  and  send  forth ( rain );

amrtam   ca  mrtyu  ca  =  immortality  and  mortality  ( death )  and;

sat  ca  asat  ca  aham  eva  =  being  ( Truth )  and  non-being  too  I  only.





The word sat meaning eternal unmanifest spirit is the action and asat denoting the temporary, physical manifestation is the

The sat is not evident in the beginning but because it is evident on manifestation the wise call the action asat being the unmanifested form of the manifested form and the cause.

The Mahabharata explains that creation is comprised of sat and asat and both are superior to material manifestations.



 Sri Madhvacarya clarifies some of the concepts from slokam-s16, 17 and 18.

Because the Supreme Lord Krishna is always propitiated by all His creation He is Rig.

Since all His forms are the same in essence He is Sama and due to the fact that He is the ultimate goal of all offerings from all beings He is Yajus.

Being the first and final recipient of all yajna or offerings and worship the Supreme Lord is know as Yagna.

As He is the activator of creation He is kratu the rituals.

As He is not supported by anything other than Himself, He is svadha offerings to the anscestors.

As He is always meditated upon He is mantra the Vedic chants.

As He is solace for the afflicted He is saranam or shelter.

Since Lord Krishna is superior to Brahma, Siva, the demigods or any other gods, He is ajya the first offering of ghee.

 As He is the holder of dara the conch shell He is dhata the holder.

As He, Himself is the oblations of yagna He is hutam or the offering in the fire.

As He is the energiser of the creation which cannot be energised on its own He is agni the fire.



The Supreme Lord being completely independent in Himself solely is different from all the above mentioned things; yet He is inseparable from them all being their essence thus He is known by them.

Since He is referred to as OM in Vedic yagnas, the resplendent Supreme Lord has a His own personal tranccendental sound vibration known as OM-kara.



Since He patronises all the Supreme Lord is pitaham the father.

Since He comprehends all the needs of everything in creation He is the matah or mother.

Since He is superior to even Prajapati who designed and constructed the worlds he is pitamahah the grandsire .

Since He is the ultimate abode of all He is sthanam the basis of all.

Since He is the protector of all He is suhrt the dear most friend. He is the root cause for the manifestation of existence He is the avyayam bijam the imperishable seed.

Since periodically He terminates all life He is pralaya the dissolution concluding the end cycle for all created beings as mrtyuh or inevitable death.

He is also certainly amritam or immortal and resides within the body sustaining life and distancing death.

The Shabda Nirnaya states that

Since the Supreme Lord Krishna possesses in full all auspicious attributes and qualities, He is sat or the eternal unmanifest spirit sat because there is nothing independent from to Him and He is asat as well because there is independent from Him.



The Supreme Lord Krishna explains some of His potencies that through the sun and fire He is tapami or causes heat and He withholds and releases rain.

He is amrtam or immortality being by which the world exists.

He is also mrtyus or death that by which this world becomes destroyed.

Never in contradiction the Supreme Lord is sat or that existence which manifest in the present time and asat or that existence which is unmanifest in present time but which existed in the past and which may manifest in the future.

Thus Lord Krishna exists in every reality as the sum of all things intelligent and unintelligent which compose His transcendental body.

The mahatmanas or great, noble beings referred to in slokam13 are those who meditate on the Supreme Lord as the unity, manifesting itself in corporeal multiformity and variegatedness throughout creation in the macrocosmic sense.

So in order to more fully understand the attributes of the Supreme Lord characterized by the mahatmanas and the method they commune with the Supreme Lord has been depicted.

Next will be described the behavior of the ignorant who full of desires covet enjoyment.



Lord Krishna explains that He radiates heat by the sun which condenses moisture over bodies of water and rises up and forms clouds which He sends forth as rains in abundance in springtime according to the seasons of every location on the Earth.

He is amritam or immortality as the life force that appears at the conception of all living beings and which departs at the cessation of all living beings as such He is also myrtuh or death.

He is all beings, manifested as matter and unmanifested as spirit.

The understanding is that according to their qualifications the mahatmanas or great beings know Lord Krishna as the internal witness of all living entities and worship Him as the one supreme absolute truth or as a specific avatar or incarnation and expansion as revealed in the Vedic scriptures.



Lord Krishna states that existing as the sun He gives heat to the worlds.

He withholds and releases rain.

He is immortal life and He is inevitable death.

He is the manifest temporary, physical creation and at the same time He is the unmanifest eternal, invisible creation.

Knowing that all these manifestations are non-different from the Supreme Lord, mahatmas or great and noble souls worship Him in different forms in the appropriate manner.

This is a continuation from slokam 15 describing different conceptions of the Supreme Lord.

To be continued  ..