For it was by action alone that the ancients, the learned kṣatriyas, set out to reach perfection, liberation. Who? Janaka, Aśvapati and the rest. If they had attained the right vision, then they set out to reach perfection while still in action, without renouncing it, for the sake of holding the world together, since action had already begun for them. But if Janaka and the rest had not attained the right vision, then the verse must be explained as: they set out to reach perfection through action as the means to the purification of being, by stages. And if you think, 'the ancients too, Janaka and the rest, did the action to be done while still not knowing, so it need not necessarily be done by another, by one who has the right vision and is fulfilled', even so, bound by the action already begun, you ought to act, looking solely to the holding-together of the world, that holding-together being the prevention of the world's straying onto a wrong path. Why is the holding-together of the world to be done? He says.

Since, even for one qualified for the discipline of knowledge, the discipline of action is the better for the beholding of the self, it was for that very reason that royal sages such as Janaka, foremost among knowers, reached consummation and attained the self by the discipline of action alone. Thus, having first said that, since a seeker of liberation is at the outset unfit for the discipline of knowledge, the man qualified for the discipline of action must do the discipline of action itself, and having said with its reason that even for one qualified for the discipline of knowledge the discipline of action is better than the discipline of knowledge, the Lord now says that for one who is to be pointed to as exemplary the discipline of action is in every way to be done: looking to the holding-together of the world, you too ought to do action itself.

There is also the example of conduct, Krishna says with 'by action alone'. The sense is, doing action, along with action. Janaka and the rest reached perfection by first doing action and then gaining knowledge, not without knowledge, for their being men of knowledge is well known in the Bharata and the rest, and from scriptures such as 'knowing Him thus, one becomes immortal here' (Nrisimha-purva-tapini Upanishad 1.6); and here too, because actions are said to be the means to knowledge, Krishna adds 'joined with the buddhi'. There is no other path, by 'there is no other path' (Shvetashvatara Upanishad 3.8); so for the others too there is no conflict, since their perfection is also by way of knowledge. And where pilgrimage-sites and the like alone are said to be the means of release, as in 'release comes by the knowledge of Brahman, or by dying at Prayaga, or by the mere bath in the Gomati near Krishna' and the like, there what is meant is release from sin and the rest, and the praise is meant as praise. Even there, in some places, their being the means to the knowledge of Brahman alone is what is said; for otherwise scripture, denying release, says, 'without the knowledge of Brahman there is no release in any way at all; the release that comes from Prayaga and the like is only its being a means to knowledge'. And the texts that praise the pilgrimage-sites do not, even where they occur, destroy the stated rule about knowledge; they are like the things said to some able servant, 'this man alone is the king, what need of the king?' and the like. As the Lord says in the Naradiya, 'the sentences about pilgrimage-sites and the rest, and those concerning action and the rest, are merely laudatory, or else deluding for the ignorant; but release comes from the sight of Me, and in no other way at all'. Therefore release comes from direct knowledge alone, and action is only its means.