The ranks
Ratha, Maharatha, Atiratha
Before the fighting starts, Duryodhana asks Bhishma to go through both armies and say what every warrior is worth. Bhishma does it by name, and the grades he uses are the epic's own: ratha, maharatha, atiratha. Most of what you will read today about maharathi and atirathi puts them in the wrong order.
Where it happens
An entire sub-book exists to do the counting.
It sits in the Udyoga Parva, the fifth book — the one about the last attempts to avoid the war. The sub-book is the Ratha- Atiratha-Samkhya Parva, the reckoning of rathas and atirathas. It runs to nine chapters and 231 shlokas. Duryodhana wants to know what he has. Bhishma tells him, warrior by warrior, on both sides, and then Duryodhana rather wishes he had not asked.
The grades
Atiratha is the top grade, not maharatha.
This is the part worth slowing down for. Nearly every retelling, every forum answer and every list online has it the other way round, with maharathi at the summit. Bibek Debroy, translating the Critical Edition, says so plainly in his footnotes: an atiratha is greater than a maharatha. Where a maharatha takes on ten thousand warriors single-handed, an atiratha takes on sixty thousand. Kisari Mohan Ganguli's much older translation glosses it the same way — "a car-warrior capable of fighting sixty thousand foes at one time". Car-warrior is his Victorian phrase for a chariot warrior.
Debroy also settles the example people argue about most. Bhishma was an atiratha, not a maharatha.
Side by side
| Grade | What it means | Can take on |
|---|---|---|
| Ratha | A chariot warrior. The base grade, and most of the men Bhishma names are rathas. | — |
| Maharatha | A great chariot warrior, skilled in all weapons. | Ten thousand |
| Atiratha | An unrivalled warrior, whose valour is unlimited. Above a maharatha. | Sixty thousand |
| Ardharatha | Half a ratha. Not a grade so much as a verdict, and Bhishma uses it once. | — |
The numbers come from Debroy's footnotes to the Critical Edition. Online you will also see figures in the hundreds of thousands. Those come from popular tradition, not from the text.
Half a ratha
Bhishma gets to Karna and stops counting.
Karna is the one man Bhishma will not grade upward. "He is not a full ratha. Nor is he an atiratha," he tells Duryodhana, in front of the whole court, and settles on "only half a ratha". That word is ardharatha, the one the tradition remembers — though Debroy keeps it in plain English throughout.
And he gives reasons, which is the part usually left out. Karna gave away the divine earrings and armour he was born with, so he will be without them at the moment they matter. He carries two curses: one from Rama — meaning Parashurama, the teacher who trained him — and one from a brahmana. Then Drona agrees with him: "in battle after battle, I have seen him retreat."
Karna's reply is the best line in the passage. He tells Bhishma that he has done no wrong, and that he has been hated at every step. Then he hands the insult straight back: "There is no doubt that I think that you are half a ratha."
It changes the war, too. Bhishma had already set a condition before he would take the generalship at all — "Let Karna or me fight first", one of them, not both. Karna answers it himself, calling Bhishma by his mother's name: "As long as Gangeya is alive, I will never fight. I will fight with the one who wields the Gandiva only after Bhishma has been killed." Gangeya is Bhishma, the son of Ganga. The man who wields the Gandiva is Arjuna. Duryodhana consecrates Bhishma on those terms, and anoints him commander of the army. So the Kauravas' most dangerous archer sits out the first ten days of the battle, and takes the field only after Bhishma falls.
From the quiz
Eight questions on this, from the thousand.
Which of these is NOT a Maharatha?
Show the answer
Warrior who could use Maya (illusion) to defeat the enemy.
Bhishma and Drona were considered Atirathas. Which of the following is NOT an Atiratha?
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Warrior who could use Maya (illusion) to defeat the enemy.
Who called Karna an Ardharatha instead of a Maharatha?
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Bhishma.
What condition did Bhishma set before deciding to accept the position of Senapati of Duryodhana's army?
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As long as Bhishma is alive, Karna should not fight.
Which five took on the role of Senapati of the Kaurava forces at various times during the Kurukshetra war?
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Bhishma, Drona, Karna, Shalya, Ashwatthama.
Before the start of the Kurukshetra war, whom did Krishna approach and ask to fight for the Pandavas as long as Bhishma is alive, and to switch sides and fight for the Kauravas once Bhishma is dead?
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Karna.
Who was the first Senapati of the Kaurava forces?
Show the answer
Bhishma.
What is Udyoga Parva about?
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Efforts made to give Pandavas their share after exile and avoid war.
Another 992 where those came from, and the quiz remembers which ones you still owe it.
Where this comes from
This site follows the Critical Edition, the text reconstructed at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, in Bibek Debroy's translation. Where the Critical Edition and popular retelling disagree — and on the order of these grades they disagree completely — the Critical Edition wins.
The passage is the Ratha-Atiratha-Samkhya Parva, chapters 161 to 169 of the Udyoga Parva in Debroy's numbering, and the definitions quoted are his footnotes. Kisari Mohan Ganguli's much older translation is in the public domain and free to read online. That makes it the easiest way to check the passage yourself. Two warnings. It numbers the same chapters 165 to 172, and it spells several of these names differently. Ganguli worked from a different recension — a different family of manuscripts.
Keep reading
Bhishma's grading is the tidiest of the epic's oddities. It is nowhere near the strangest. There are twenty-five genuinely hard questions here, with the answers — a dog who curses a king, a yaksha who lends his manhood and must wait for a death to get it back, and the reason Karna refused to wash his feet.