Advaita Vedānta

These commentators treat the question chiefly as a problem in the scope and grading of renunciation. One reads tyaga as the giving up of the fruit alone and sannyasa as formal, complete renunciation, and finds the doubt resolved once that is laid out. One develops an elaborate scheme: a renunciation of all action that follows the awakening to reality and lies beyond the three qualities; a renunciation of action undertaken before the awakening, by one wishing to inquire into reality; and a renunciation by undiscerning persons still qualified for action, which alone admits a threefold sattvic-rajasic-tamasic division, and it is this last that Arjuna wants sorted out by that threefold division. Another argues that faith belongs only to fruit-bearing action, not to fruitless renunciation, so faith-less renunciation is actually higher, and its single fruit, the ceasing of distraction, is everywhere the same and admits no threefold gradation. One holds that Arjuna's own wording, 'separately,' shows the two are in fact not separate in meaning, so the question stands only because a doubt lingers on this one portion while the rest is settled.

Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Ānandagiri

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Here renunciation and relinquishment are read as means to liberation grounded in scripture. One backs this with Upanishadic texts: 'not by action, not by offspring, nor by wealth, but by relinquishment some have reached immortality,' and the passage about men of pure being who, well determined in the meaning of the Vedanta, are set free through the discipline of renunciation. On this reading Arjuna's question is sharply posed: are these two words of separate meaning, so that each own-form must be told apart, or of one meaning, in which case that single own-form must still be stated. The care of the word 'separately' marks a wish for the precise distinction, not a loose synonymy.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Yāmunācārya

Dvaita

These commentators stress that the chapter gathers up in brief the whole means spoken of before, and that the means meant here is the means that is knowledge. They meet head-on the worry that restating what has already been said is pointless: the Lord draws the matter together in brief and so concludes it, which is not idle repetition. They also note that the threefold play of the qualities, set out later in the chapter, has not yet been told, so there is genuinely new ground as well.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the verse as preparing the chapter's culminating movement toward refuge in Krishna alone. One frames sannyasa as the renunciation of action and tyaga as the renunciation of the fruit of action, and sees the whole opening as setting the ground for the chapter's seal of Krishna as the sole sufficient refuge. The other goes further: the single fruit of all the teaching is that by total renunciation one must take refuge in the Lord with one's whole being, and Arjuna, already inclined to renunciation as supreme knowledge, asks in order to verify this against Krishna's own express words. On this reading the 'tyaga' worth knowing is the proper relinquishment done for the Lord's service, as distinct from a renunciation of action driven by mere demonic compulsion.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

These commentators frame the question as the reconciling of two counsels that seem to clash. Across the earlier chapters Arjuna heard, in some places, the complete renunciation of works, and in others, the doing of works with the giving up of the fruit alone. The all-knowing and supremely compassionate Lord would not teach two contraries, so Arjuna asks how renunciation of action and the performance of action can stand together without colliding. One states plainly that the two words finally convey one meaning, as two names can point to a single thing, yet allows a real distinction: discarding all activity is renunciation, while abandoning only the fruit of action is relinquishment; the everyday and occasional duties, done without any motive of fruit, do not bind the doer.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator keeps the reading spare and textual. Earlier verses spoke of both the relinquisher and the renouncer side by side, calling one the man of understanding and the other the yogin. Having heard the two named together, Arjuna naturally wishes to know the difference between them, and that is the whole point of his question.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Modern

These commentators insist the question is not about dictionary meanings. One notes that the root sense of both words is 'to give up,' which Arjuna already knew; the real issue is that the Lord nowhere advises giving up action itself, but rather directs the giving up of the hope of fruit and the dedicating of all actions to the Supreme, whereas the Upanishads do describe a path of renunciation that looks like the abandonment of action. Arjuna saw that the Lord was using the two words in some sense other than the ordinary 'renunciant stage of life,' and asks to clear that up. Another maps the terms onto Chapter 2: sannyasa is the same as samkhya, and tyaga is the same as karma-yoga, and traces both equations through a chain of later verses; he also reads Arjuna's question as the first kind of inquiry, asked in order to live by the answer, not merely to become learned. A third simply says the two terms were never lucidly distinguished before, so the Lord now explains their right significance.

Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda