a veritable wretch. Putting forth thy prowess,
pay the debt thou owest to Truth, Prosperity, Virtue, and Fame! O
foremost of warriors, pierce this division, and keep these to thy right."'

"Sanjaya continued, 'Thus urged by Bhima and Kesava, Savyasachin
prevailing over Drona and Karna, began to resist the foe all round. Many
foremost of Kshatriyas (among the Kurus), putting forth all their
prowess, failed to withstand Arjuna who advanced at the very van of his
troops, and who, like a raging conflagration, was consuming the foremost
ones among his foes. Then Duryodhana and Karna, and Sakuni, the son of
Suvala, covered Kunti's son, Dhananjaya, with showers of shafts. Baffling
the weapons of all those warriors, that foremost of all persons
well-skilled in weapons, O monarch, covered them (in return) with his
shafts. Aiming at their weapons with his (and thus baffling them all),
Arjuna, endued with great lightness of hand and possessing a complete
control over his senses, pierced every one of those warriors with ten
keen-pointed shafts. The welkin was then covered with dust. Thick showers
of arrows fell. Darkness set in, and a loud and terrible uproar arose.
When such was the state of things, neither the welkin, nor the earth, nor
the points of the compass, could any longer be seen. Stupefied by the
dust, all the troops became blind. Neither the foe, O king, nor we, could
distinguish each other. For this reason, the kings began to fight, guided
by conjecture and the names they uttered. Deprived of their cars,
car-warriors, O king, encountering one another, lost all order and became
a tangled mass. Their steeds killed and drivers slain, many of them,
becoming inactive, preserved their lives and looked exceedingly
affrighted. Slain steeds with riders deprived of lives were seen to lie
on slain elephants as if stretched on mountain-breasts. Then Drona,
moving away from that battle towards the north took up his station
there, and seemed to resemble a smokeless fire. Beholding him move away
from the battle towards the north, the Pandava troops, O king, began to
tremble. Indeed, beholding Drona resplendent and handsome and blazing
with energy, the enemy, inspired with fright became pale and wavered on
the field, O Bharata! While summoning the hostile army to battle, and
looking like an elephant in rut, the enemy became perfectly hopeless of
vanquishing him, like the Danavas hopeless of vanquishing Vasava. Some
among them became pe