The Dirac wave equation can be treated equally in covariant and Hamiltonian
forms. Recently the equations in Hamiltonian form which are in some sense
the generalizations of the Dirac Hamiltonian form to the arbitrary spin cas
e have become popular. Here we give similar generalization in the covariant
form for the field with n bispinor indices and investigate the physics beh
ind these two generalizations. We show that both generalizations are relate
d to the representations of the de Sitter group and give the multiplets wit
h certain mass and spin. It appears that covariant and Hamiltonian forms ar
e not physically equivalent, the latter one offers nonphysical solutions wh
ich should be eliminated using some sort of additional conditions.