धृष्टकेतुश्चेकितानः काशिराजश्च वीर्यवान्।पुरुजित्कुन्तिभोजश्च शैब्यश्च नरपुङ्गवः॥
dhṛṣṭaketuścekitānaḥ kāśirājaśca vīryavānpurujit kuntibhojaśca śaibyaśca nara-puṅgavaḥyudhāmanyuśca vikrānta uttamaujāśca vīryavān
Word by word
The verse says
Dhrishtaketu, Chekitana, the brave king of Kashi, Purujit, Kuntibhoja, and Shaibya, the best of men.
In plain words
The list goes on. More enemy names, more honours attached to each.
These verses are often skipped, and it is easy to see why — they read like a register. But the register is the point. Duryodhana is standing in front of his teacher reciting the opposition roll, and he is not nearly finished.
Where you've felt this · in health
Waiting for test results, some people can recite every statistic they have found about their condition. Every number, every study. The reciting is not really about the facts. It is something to do with the hands while the fear has nowhere to go.
Going deeper
There is a reason the Gita spends its opening chapter on names.
An epic audience knew these people. Each name carried a story — a wrong suffered, an oath taken, a family tie. To hear the list read out was to hear the whole history of the quarrel compressed into a few lines. What looks like a catalogue to us was, to its first listeners, a slow and heavy roll of everything that had led to this field.
That matters for what comes next. When Arjuna finally looks across at this same army in verse 26, he will not see a list of warriors. He will see fathers, teachers, cousins, sons. The same men, counted twice — once as strength, once as family. The difference between those two ways of counting is what breaks him.