एवं परम्पराप्राप्तमिमं राजर्षयो विदुः।स कालेनेह महता योगो नष्टः परन्तप॥
evaṃ paramparā-prāptam imaṃ rājarṣayo viduḥsa kāleneha mahatā yogo naṣṭaḥ parantapa
Word by word
The verse says
Passed down like that, the kings who were also seers knew it. Over a long stretch of time, Arjuna, the practice was lost here.
In plain words
And then it was lost.
Paramparā - one after another, the handing-on. That is how it travelled. And kālena mahatā - by great time - it broke.
Krishna says this plainly. The chain failed.
Where you've felt this · in creative work
In one small workshop, four men knew how to cut the difficult joint. Three retired inside a year and the fourth moved to another city. Nothing was destroyed and nobody did anything wrong. The knowledge simply stopped being in anybody's hands.
Going deeper
This knowledge was held by people who were running states, not by renunciates in forests.
Rāja-ṛṣayaḥ - royal seers, kings who were also sages. The compound is worth pausing on, because it is the chapter's second pointed detail.
It is consistent with Janaka at 3.20, and with the whole direction of the Gita's argument: the highest thing is available to someone carrying responsibilities.
And then it was lost - an admission most traditions avoid making about their own transmission. The Gita says the line broke.
That has a consequence for how the book presents its own authority. It is not claiming unbroken succession. It is claiming restoration, which is a different and far more fragile kind of claim.
It also sets up what follows. If knowledge can be lost by ordinary wear, then something has to come back down from time to time, and the next six verses explain what does.