How many characters are in the Mahabharata?

The Mahabharata does not have a cast list, it has a population. Counting is hard for three reasons. Many figures are named once, in a battle catalogue, and never again. Many are known by several names: Arjuna alone answers to Dhananjaya, Partha, Savyasachin, Gudakesha, Phalguna and Kiritin, and Krishna to Vasudeva, Janardana, Govinda, Keshava and Madhava. And the genealogical sections list long lines of ancestors who never act in the story at all.

Depending on where those lines are drawn, published counts of named individuals range from a few hundred to well over a thousand. The figures who actually carry the plot are far fewer: five Pandavas, Draupadi, Krishna, Kunti, Gandhari, Dhritarashtra, Duryodhana and Dushasana, Karna, Bhishma, Drona, Kripa, Ashwatthama, Shakuni, Vidura, Drupada and his children, Abhimanyu, Ghatotkacha, Jayadratha, Shalya and Satyaki. Two or three dozen people determine almost everything that happens.

What makes the epic feel crowded is its habit of giving even minor figures a history. A warrior killed in half a verse on the fourteenth day may have been introduced twelve books earlier through his father and a curse. This is a feature of oral composition, where the audience already knew the names, and it is why reading the Mahabharata with a character index beside you is not cheating.

The character section of this site covers 273 figures, major and secondary, each with their faction, their relationships and the tales they appear in.

A related count is often asked alongside this one. Dhritarashtra has a hundred sons and one daughter, and the epic lists all their names in the Adi Parva, so a large slice of any character list is a single family of which only three or four ever speak.