While recounting the troops under Bhima’s command, Bhīṣma-Parva defines an akṣauhiṇi more realistically as around 25,000 men. The numbers of elephant and horse in the table appear a little out of place. In Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra, the smallest unit of an ancient army is a company of ten fighting men, and it matches the unit, Patti in the epic. If we take only the numbers of men as a fact, the number of non-fighting men shrinks a little.
