Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad 1: Ground of the World and Knowledge of the Self

The Bhāṣya attributed to Śaṅkara understands the Brahmavādins as knowers of Brahman deliberating together. Their question may concern Brahman's nature as well as its material and efficient causality. The Upaniṣad is to remove the false superimposition of self and non-self through knowledge of their unity.

Śaṅkarānanda opens with the difficult-to-grasp identity of Brahman and Ātman. For him, the deliberation of the Brahmavādins does not lead merely into cosmological speculation but prepares the knowledge in which the ground of the world and the innermost Self coincide.

Nārāyaṇa describes the Brahmavādins as those versed in the Veda who consider together what the origin and ground of the world may be. He reads the preamble and the following mantras as a connected sequence of question and answer, thereby making the chapter's dialogical structure explicit.

Vijñānabhagavat first has the Brahmavādins remove opposing positions alien to the Veda. They speak of Brahman as the purport of all the Vedas; on his reading, the following mantras unfold the concise content of this introductory Brāhmaṇa statement.