Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the verse through the knowledge that the Self is not the agent and has no longing for the fruit of action. Once that is known, action cannot stain or bind the person, because there is no real doer in it to be bound. So they fold every reader into a single instruction with two cases. If you do not yet know this truth, act for the purification of your own mind, which readies you for knowledge; if you already know it, act for the holding-together of the world. The ancient seekers acted in just this spirit, and so action must necessarily be done. An objection is raised within this reading and answered: if neither the ignorant pupil nor the realized knower needs the fruits, why act at all? The reply is that action remains the means, either to purity or to the world's welfare, and the example of the wise settles the matter.

Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Here the knowledge that frees is specifically the knowledge of the Lord, Krishna himself. The ancient seekers, 'freed of sin', did action because they knew him in the way he has just described; and Arjuna, his own sin shaken off by that same knowledge of the Lord, is to do that very action. So knowledge is named as the cause of the action being done rightly, and the action in view is karma-yoga, the duty of one who seeks liberation. These commentators also identify the ancients precisely with Vivasvat, Manu and the rest from the opening of the chapter, and read 'still earlier' simply as 'ancient', not as a qualifier of the doing, pointing to the beginningless flow of this transmission.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

These commentators take the verse mainly as the example of conduct, doing action with this knowledge, and they work carefully on why it is not a mere repetition of earlier verses. Their sharp point is about the knowers: even those who already know act here 'with longing for greater liberation', so the doing of action by knowers is taught as conduct, not as the cause of their release. They are explicit that for the knowers, liberation is not produced by action through knowledge. They also explain that when Janaka, Vivasvat and the others were mentioned before, their being knowers was not what the Lord meant; and they note that since any single action is momentary and cannot literally be the same action repeated, the appeal must be to the Veda, the pre-existing standard, which is why 'action' is recapitulated as something beginningless.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

For these commentators the knowledge is that action done in the disposition of a yogi, indeed by the Lord himself, does not bind, and the action commended is one's own svadharma. They press the lineage hard: the order to act is itself trustworthy because it descends from those who finally crossed over, who did this work while still in the seeker's state and because it was the form of the Lord's own command. This appeal to the line of the great is itself a path-move: one walks in the road opened by the great souls, not in an unprecedented road of one's own. The seekers named are Kaksivat, Narada, Manu, Janaka and the rest.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

These commentators hold that the verse returns the discussion to the karma-yoga taught earlier in order to unfold it further. One pins the case to precedent: the line of royal seekers is the very line of Vivasvat, Manu and Iksvaku named at the chapter's opening, and they took up action before knowledge, not in place of it, for the sake of inner purity. Another stresses that the ancients such as Janaka acted solely to set the world in motion, that is, to keep people on the right path by example. A third frames the ancients as the Lord's own disciples who, having known him alone, did desireless action, and gives the familiar two-fold rule: act for purification if the mind is impure, for the guidance of the world if it is pure, and in no case renounce action.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva

Kashmir Shaivism

This reading is brief and direct: therefore you too, purified by this understanding, do the actions that must necessarily be done. The emphasis falls on the purified intellect as the ground from which obligatory action is to be performed, without elaboration of lineage or fruit.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Modern

These commentators carry the verse into practical, present-day terms. One restates the two-fold rule plainly: knowing the Self cannot desire or be tainted by fruits, do your duty; if the heart is impure, act to purify it, and if you have realized the Self, work for the world's wellbeing, as Janaka and the ancients did. Another reads the verse as Krishna's bridge into the coming definition of action and non-action, since the school of renunciation claimed release comes by abandoning action; the answer is that desireless action is itself the true non-action. The third makes the verse speak straight to Arjuna's situation: Arjuna is a seeker who, mistaking his duty of battle for a terrible deed, wants to drop it, but the example of past seekers shows that even after the longing for liberation awakens, one's proper duty must not be abandoned in form; it is to be carried on with desireless intent, because it is attachment to the fruit, not the action, that binds.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas