Advaita Vedānta

How can a sacrifice, once performed and finished, produce rain that falls much later? The answer is the unseen power, apurva: the sacrifice does not act directly but leaves behind a subtle, invisible potency. The oblation, offered with prior meditation on the deity, generates this apurva; it rises by the rays to the sun, returns as rain, becomes grain, is eaten, turns into semen and blood, and finally appears as offspring. On this reading the word 'sacrifice' in 'from sacrifice comes rain' really means this unseen potency, which is itself called dharma. One source notes the objection that a sacrifice cannot cause its own arising, and answers that 'action' here means the activity of the priest and patron, distinct from the sacrifice itself, so there is no circle.

Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Swami Sivananda

Viśiṣṭādvaita

The chain is read with the plainest meaning that will work. Sacrifice arises from action in the ordinary, visible sense: the working of the man who performs it and the gaining of wealth and materials. One source presses the point: the word 'karma-samudbhavah' should not be read as merit and demerit (punya-papa), but glossed as the acquiring of substance and the like; and where the straightforward sense of 'sacrifice' is possible, no one needs to infer an unseen-potency (apurva-lakshana) at all. The scriptural link from sacrifice to rain is accepted on the authority of texts like Manu, but the link is not loaded with a hidden metaphysical mechanism.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

Rain comes from sacrifice because the rain-god is the presiding spirit of the cloud-circle, and the substance offered up in sacrifice is, in effect, the food of the rain-cloud: by what it enjoys, the rain-cloud's strength is increased, so the offering is its cause. A careful distinction is drawn about which sacrifice is meant. It is not the prior sacrifice by which a being long ago attained the very status of rain-god, because that sacrifice belongs to a wheel already turning, whereas this verse is an injunction about the wheel still to be brought about by your action now. The reasoning is firmly anti-apurva: if one admitted an unseen potency, the primary, literal sense would have to be abandoned for a figurative one, which is unwarranted. One source even reconciles rain arising from the sun (Manu) with rain arising from the sea, so that both scriptural statements stand without conflict.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Bhedabheda

The chain is accepted in its literal sense, and what the sacrifice manifests is the apurva, here named by the word 'righteousness' (dharma), which is the cause of the world's manifold variety. But the link is pointed forward and upward: action arises from the Veda, and the Veda arises from the Imperishable (Akshara); therefore the all-pervading Brahman is ever established in sacrifice. The visible food-chain is thus the lower end of a ladder whose top is the changeless Brahman.

Śrī Bhāskara

Śuddhādvaita

The whole cycle is read as the self-disclosure of the Lord (Bhagavan). One source treats yajna as absolute in this order: food itself is born of yajna and the chain of beings rests on it, so the worship that produces the food is the foundation of the world-order. The other unfolds the chain as a series of questions and answers leading back to Bhagavan: bodies come from food so that the enjoyment of Bhagavan (who is the very form of rasa, delight) can be accomplished through living beings; rain produces the food; sacrifice, being for the sake of Bhagavan, becomes the rain; and since action is the means by which the form of Bhagavan whose essence is yajna is manifested, the whole cycle is the Lord disclosing himself, and the worshipper acts as a portion and power (vibhuti) of the Lord.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

The chain is read inwardly as the structure of consciousness and enjoyment. 'Food' is the enjoyable, the manifold known by the many names of maya, vidya and time; 'rain' is the enjoyer, unbroken consciousness, since the enjoyable depends on an enjoyer; 'sacrifice' is the very activity of enjoyment; 'action' is that activity arising by the freedom of the power of doing; and this freedom arises by the touch of Brahman, the supreme Self, the great Lord surging up with boundless freedom, who in turn rests on the Imperishable, consciousness wholly at peace. So the sacrifice, turning a six-spoked wheel, sets both release and worldly dealing in motion, and Brahman, made lovely by the play of knowledge and ignorance, is established in the sacrifice itself. This source also reports the conventional reading (food through semen and blood, rain via the oblation to the sun) and a third reading in which 'food' is the fivefold sense-object, 'beings' are the senses, and the self is nourished by enjoying objects, so that Brahman is established in action because it is made of that.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

The chain is read as the Lord's arrangement for sustaining the creatures he has made. One source frames the two verses around Prajapati, the Supreme Lord, who having created creatures then created sacrifice at that very time for their sustenance, so that those who follow the Lord must necessarily perform it. The Marathi tradition carries the chain one step further (into 3.15): the source of action is in Brahman, meaning the Veda and Primal Matter, and that Brahman has its source in the Akshara, the Immutable Highest Brahman; hence the Supreme Spirit pervades the whole moving and unmoving universe and dwells in sacrifice in the form of the sacred Vedas.

Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīdhara Svāmī

Modern

The modern voices read the chain plainly and then either widen or define it. One traces the same sequence and observes that the next verse takes the evolution still further back, behind action to Prakriti (Nature) and behind Prakriti to the Imperishable Brahman, lining it up with the Taittiriya Upanishad's order of creation from the supreme Self through ether, air, fire, water, earth, plants and man. Another keeps the focus practical, defining 'food' experientially: anna is simply whatever a given being eats to sustain its life-breaths and build its body, so that earth is the food of an earthworm; food is thus the visible anchor of the whole chain. A third clarifies the technical term, taking yajna here to mean the apurva, the subtle unseen form a sacrifice assumes between its performance and the appearing of its fruit.

Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda