'In what time, having departed': the connection is with words held apart from each other. In which time the strivers go to non-return, to no rebirth, and also to its opposite, to return. By 'yogins' both yogins and doers of action are meant, the doers of action being called yogins figuratively, by the qualification 'of the yogins by the yoga of action' (Gītā 3.3). In which time the yogins who have departed, who have died, go to non-return, and in which time those who have departed go to return: that time I shall tell, O bull of the Bharatas. He states that time.

Here the word 'time' (kala), because the path is accompanied by deities who preside over the divisions of time from the day up to the year, serves to indicate the path; the meaning is, the path in which the yogins who depart go to no-return and the doers of meritorious action go to return, that path I shall declare.

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

Krishna states, with 'at what time' and so on, the presiding deities of time and the rest, by whose passing the departed go to return or to non-return. The word 'time' stands for more, since fire and the rest will also be spoken of.