अपर्याप्तं तदस्माकं बलं भीष्माभिरक्षितम्।पर्याप्तं त्विदमेतेषां बलं भीमाभिरक्षितम्॥
aparyāptaṃ tadasmākaṃ balaṃ bhīṣmābhirakṣitamparyāptaṃ tvidameteṣāṃ balaṃ bhīmābhirakṣitam
Word by word
The verse says
Our strength, guarded by Bhishma, is beyond measure; their strength, guarded by Bhima, is easy to measure.
In plain words
Duryodhana's conclusion: we are stronger.
Except the Sanskrit will not sit still. The word he uses of his own army, aparyāptam, can mean unlimited — or it can mean not enough. Both readings are grammatically sound. And the word he uses of the enemy, paryāptam, flips the same way: limited, or quite sufficient.
So the line reads either ours is unlimited, theirs is small, or ours is not enough, theirs is quite enough. Translators have gone both ways for centuries.
Where you've felt this · with money
Read back a message you sent when you were anxious about something. Very often the same sentence can be taken two ways, and you genuinely cannot remember which one you meant. The confidence and the doubt were both in there when you wrote it.
Going deeper
The traditions split here, and the split is worth knowing rather than hiding.
One reading keeps Duryodhana boastful: our forces are unlimited, theirs are not. It fits a man who has just spent nine verses talking himself up. The other reading has the truth slipping out sideways — our forces are not enough, theirs are — which fits a man who has just spent six of those nine verses cataloguing the enemy.
The second reading is the more interesting one, and several major commentators take it. On that reading Duryodhana says the opposite of what he intends, in front of his own general, and does not notice.
A reader deserves to know that this is genuinely undecided rather than be handed one version as settled. It is the first place in the Gita where the text itself refuses to resolve, and it will not be the last.