Looking to your own duty too, war being the kṣatriya's own duty, you should not waver, should not be shaken, from the duty that belongs to a kṣatriya's very nature. And that war, undertaken for the sake of dharma, through the conquest of the earth, for the protection of the people, does not depart from dharma; it is supremely lawful. For a kṣatriya there is no greater good than such a lawful war. And why is that war to be fought? He says.

Moreover, this war that has been begun, though it involves the slaying of living beings, you ought not, like the agnishomiya and other sacrifices, to waver about, once you have considered your own duty. For a kshatriya there is no good higher than righteous war, war engaged in by lawful means. As it will be said, 'heroism, vigour, constancy, skill, not fleeing in battle, giving, and lordliness, this is the action of the kshatriya born of his nature'. And in the agnishomiya and the like there is no real injury to the sacrificial animal, since scripture declares that the ritual killing brings the animal, after the laying down of a far meaner body, that of a goat and the like, to a blessed body and to heaven and the rest. For it is heard: 'truly you do not die by this, you are not harmed; you go to the gods by paths easy to travel; there where the doers of good go, not the doers of ill, there may the god Savitri set you'. And here too the gaining of far more blessed bodies and the rest by those who die in battle has been told, in 'worn-out garments' and the rest. So the ritual killing in the agnishomiya and the like is itself the protecting of the animal, as the surgeon's work is to the sick man.

This is a brief sub-gloss. For a fuller reading of this verse, see Madhusūdana, Śaṅkara, or Rāmānuja above.

Madhvacharya does not comment on this verse.