mpass with shafts
from Gandiva. The welkin seemed ablaze with meteors. Innumerable crows,
alighting from the sky, perched on the bodies (of dead combatants).
Meanwhile, Arjuna continued to slay the foe with his Gandiva, like
Mahadeva slaying the Asuras with his Pinaka equipped with tawny
string.[174] Then the illustrious Kiritin, that subjugator of (hostile)
ranks, dispersing the shafts of the foe by means of his own formidable
bow, slaughtered with his arrows many foremost ones among the Kurus,
mounted on their foremost of steeds and elephants. Then many kings,
taking up heavy maces and clubs of iron and swords and darts and diverse
other kinds of powerful weapons, assuming terrible forms, rushed suddenly
against Partha in that battle. Then Arjuna, bending with his arms his
formidable bow Gandiva which resembled the bow of Indra himself and whose
twang was as loud as the roar of the clouds congregating at the end of
the Yuga, and laughing the while, went on consuming thy troops and
increasing the population of Yama's kingdom. Indeed, that hero caused
those enraged warriors with their cars and elephants and with the
foot-soldiers and bowmen supporting them, to be deprived of their arms
and lives and thus to swell the population of Yama's domain.'"

SECTION CXLV

"Sanjaya said, 'Hearing the twang, resembling the loud call of Death
himself or the frightful peal of Indra's thunder, of Dhananjaya's bow,
while he stretched it, that host of thine, O king, anxious with fear and
exceedingly agitated, became like the waters of the sea with fishes and
makaras within them, ruffled into mountain-like waves and lashed into
fury by the hurricane that arises at the end of the Yuga. Then
Dhananjaya, the son of Pritha, careered in battle in such a way that he
was seen at the same time to be present in all directions, displaying his
wonderful weapons. Indeed, so light-handed was the son of Pandu that we
could not mark when he took out his shafts, O king, when he fixed them on
the bow-string, when he stretched the bow, and when he let them off. Then
the mighty-armed one, O king, excited with wrath, invoked into existence
the invincible Aindra weapon, frightening all the Bharatas. Hundreds and
thousands of blazing shafts of fiery mouths, inspired by mantras with the
force of celestial weapons, flowed from it. With those shafts resembling
fire or the rays of the sun, coursing with fierce impetuosity, the welkin
became incapable of bein