Shloka 23
Bhīṣma’s Appraisal of Kaurava Champions (भीष्मकृतः रथिनां गुणनिरूपणम्)
तथाहं भरतश्रेष्ठ सर्वसेनापतिस्तव । शत्रून् विध्वंसयिष्यामि कदर्थीकृत्य पाण्डवान्
tathāhaṃ bharataśreṣṭha sarvasenāpatistava | śatrūn vidhvaṃsayīṣyāmi kadarthīkṛtya pāṇḍavān ||
ဘီရှ္မက ပြောသည်– «အို ဘာရတမျိုး၏ အမြတ်ဆုံးသူ၊ ထိုသို့ပင်။ ငါသည် သင်၏ စစ်တပ်တစ်ရပ်လုံး၏ စစ်ဦးစီးချုပ် ဖြစ်၏။ ထို့ကြောင့် ပाण्डဝတို့ကို အရင်ဆုံး ဒုက္ခပေးကာ ရန်သူတပ်ကို ချေမှုန်းပစ်မည်»။
भीष्म उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse highlights the tension between personal affection and role-based duty: Bhīṣma, bound by allegiance and his office as commander, commits himself to prosecuting the war against the Pāṇḍavas despite the moral weight of harming kin.
In the Udyoga Parva’s war-preparation context, Bhīṣma addresses a Kuru leader as “best of the Bharatas,” affirming his position as commander-in-chief and declaring his intention to subdue the Pāṇḍavas and destroy the opposing forces.