Originally posted by: TheWatcher
This topic is one of the most popular debate topics on Mahabharata the views on many people distinguish from each other but lets start it over again . Who was the most powerful warrior in MB
We are not including Lord Krishna as he is GOD
1. Bhishma ( Keeping aside his icha mrityu)
2.Arjuna
3.Drona
4.Karna
5.abhimanyu
6.bheem
For me its Karna because even lord krishna praised him not arjun in the battle and bhishma himself said that he was the greatest archer in the world he fought and almost defeated arjun even with his three curses but was intervened by krishna
Actually, why are you not including Krishna? The evidence on his fighting prowess is mixed (taking into account a combined MB and Shrimad Bhagvatam). On one hand, he displayed divine powers in his following wars/battles
- Banasura
- Narakasura
- Shalva
- Sudakshina of Kashi
On the other hand, the other victories that he did have were against mediocre warriors - Sishupala, Rukmi, Dantavatra, Paundrak.
However, Krishna's record against Jarasandha is a questionable one, and invokes the question of whether it was really as one sided as SB claims. After 17 wars, if Jarasandha was well and truly defeated, Krishna should have been able to militarily overrun most of his empire. After all, if the assumption above that he was god applied here, why would we assume that his capabilities would be less than either Arjun's, Bheeshma's or Karna's? But the evidence hardly seems to suggest it. On the contrary, it suggests that all those 17 wars, taken together, were rather Pyrrhic victories over Jarasandha, which is why Krishna evacuated the Yadavas out of Mathura and all the way to Dwarka. If one ignores the 'yogamaya' narrative and looks at the territory that the Yadavas had to go thru in getting to Dwarka, it went thru quite a number of hostile kingdoms on the way, including Shalva's. And after Krishna left, Mathura was overrun by Jarasandha, and probably kept changing hands until after the Kurukshetra war, when it ended up in the hands of the Pandavas.
Essentially, Krishna did well in certain divine settings, but when it came to being a military leader, he was a great leader w/ a mediocre following, which would be why he chose not to try and make Ugrasena the chakravarty emperor, preferring to back Yudisthir instead. Also, it's somewhat inexplicable that in a war b/w dharam & adharm, he kept his family & himself out of it as far as a combative role went. So he definitely deserves to be analyzed along w/ the rest
I'd therefore say that Krishna deserves to be analyzed in the list above. If one analyzes Abhimanyu, one should look @ some other warriors as well who were likely way ahead of him - Krishna, Balarama, Pradhyumna, Samba, and some of Abhimanyu's equals - Satyaki and Bhurishravas. Would you include rakshashas here - Ghatotkacha & Alambusha? I would. Then there were warriors who almost killed Arjun w/ their weapons, had it not been for Krishna - Bhagadatta and Shrutayudha.
I'd therefore arrange the warriors not as one would conventionally think, but try & factor in all their achievements as well as their records against each other full strength, no vows or anything involved. So I'd include Bheeshma w/ his ichcha mrityu, Krishna himself, Karna w/ his kavach-kundalas, Bhagadatta and Shrutayudha, Jayadrath w/ his Shiva blessings, Ashwatthama w/ his Narayanastra & Brahmashira and so on.
So if I had to rank them, here is how I'd do it
- Krishna
- Balarama
- Pradhyumna
- Samba
- Bhima
- Karna
- Jarasandha
- Bheeshma
- Parashurama
- Drona
- Arjun
- Ashwatthama
- Kripacharya
- Rukmi
- Bhurishrava
- Jayadrath
- Ghatotkacha
- Alambusha
- Bhagadatta
- Satyaki
- Sishupala
- Shrutayudha
- Abhimanyu
After that would come all the rest of them - Pandyan ruler, Vrishaketu, Shalya, Yudisthir, Drupada, Kritavarma, Shikhandi, Dhrishtadyumna, Vrihadshatra of Kekaya, Chitrasena (Karna's son), Virata, Sahadev, Nakul, Dhrishtaketu, Sahadev, Iravana, Draupadi's sons, Gandhari's sons, Shakuni, Ulooka, Yuyutsu, et al
Some of the incidents I used in arriving @ the above ranking:
- Krishna's divine victories I included
- Balarama uprooting Hastinapur (as per SB) and Bheeshma, Drona et al being able to do squat
- Pradhyumna defeating Shalva & Shambara, and being one of the 4 people who could break a Chakravyuha
- Samba defeating all the Kauravas b4 he was surrounded & captured - on the occasion that he disrupted the swayamvara of Duryodhan's daughter Laxmanaa
- Bhima killing not just rakshashas, but also subduing Karna (when neither was constrained by any vows or handicaps) and doing the heavylifting during the Rajasuya yagna. Bhima also killed the bulk of Kaurava warriors, not counting Gandhari's 100 sons. B/w him & Arjun, all the Kaurava warriors died @ their hands
- Karna for not just his conquests, but also defeating Jarasandha on at least 2 occasions and helping Duryodhan defeat everybody who tried to oppose his abduction of a Kalinga princess.
- Jarasandha being an emperor despite the presence of Bheeshma as a powerful rival. Even Pandu came nowhere near attacking him, he was so dominant.
- Bheeshma for keeping Hastinapur intact despite wars around him - mainly Jarasandha's wars w/ Krishna
- Parashurama, who got defeated by Bheeshma, despite teaching him, Drona, Karna, et al
- Drona, who wiped out the Panchalas and just about every major Pandava ally - Virata, Sankha, Purujit, Kuntibhoj, Vridhakshatra, Dhrishtaketu, Sahadev of Magadha & many more.
- While one may be surprised to not see Arjun in the top 10, fact remains that the bulk of his important victories were w/ Krishna & Hanuman on his chariot, which were external factors, as opposed to things like the boons of Bheeshma, Ashwatthama, Kripa, Jayadrath, and so on. Outside that war, Arjun's military achievements didn't tower over the first 10. During the Rajasuya conquests, the biggest achievements were made by Bhima. In Matsya, Brihannala had an element of surprise on his side, which wasn't replicated later.
- Ashwatthama - if Drona killed the bulk of Pandava allies, Ashwatthama killed the remainder. Even though he attacked a sleeping army, he was met w/ fierce resistance by Shikhandi, Draupadi's sons and so on. Aside from that, he killed a number of major Pandava warriors and came close to wiping out the Pandavas w/ his Narayanastra. But he never won a battle against Arjun
- Kripacharya, who did reasonably well against all the Pandavas, but had his share of defeats @ the hands of Arjun, Abhimanyu, Satyaki, Shikhandi and so on. And went on to survive the war
One gets the idea. Given that of the above, different warriors defeated different others on different occasions, it's hard to absolutely rank them, but from Bhima up to Kripacharya, they fall into a cluster where there's little to tell them apart. However, that's how I ranked them.
Avatar and Signatures Shop
Anupamaa
Iss Pyaar Ko Kya Naam Doon
Indian Mythology
