From food, from what is eaten and changed into blood and seed, beings come to be, are born, before our eyes. From the rain-cloud comes the arising of food. From sacrifice the rain-cloud comes to be: 'the oblation duly cast into the fire reaches the sun; from the sun rain is born, from rain food, and from food the creatures' (Manu 3.76). The sacrifice here is the unseen power (apūrva). And that sacrifice has its rise from action: action is the work of the officiating priest and the sacrificer, and the unseen power that is the sacrifice arises from that action.

From food all beings come to be; from rain comes the arising of food. This the whole world witnesses. And that from sacrifice rain comes is learned from scripture, in such texts as 'the oblation rightly cast into the fire reaches the sun; from the sun is born rain, from rain food, thence creatures'. And sacrifice arises from action, in the form of the working of the man who does it, the gaining of wealth and the rest.

Krishna gives a further reason, with 'from food'. Sacrifice, being the rain, is called its cause. If a prior sacrifice were meant, it would not enter into the wheel; what is to be brought about by the wheel is the enjoining of action, and not what is now to be done by mere parity. The rain-god is the presiding spirit of the cloud-circle, and that arises from sacrifice, as the Manu smrti says, 'an oblation duly cast into the fire reaches the sun; from the sun rain is born, from rain food, and from food the creatures' (Manu 3.76). By the two statements there is no conflict, the rain arising both from the sun and from the sea. So it is possible for rain to arise from sacrifice. 'Sacrifice' is the giving up of a substance with a deity in view; 'action' is the other activity.