arashtra all endued with mighty
energy. And liberate ye also these ladies, at the command of king
Yudhishthira the just. If, ye Gandharvas, ye do not set the sons of
Dhritarashtra free peacefully, I shall certainly rescue Suyodhana (and
his party) by exerting my prowess.' And speaking unto them thus, Pritha's
son, Dhananjaya, capable of wielding the bow with his left hand also,
then rained a shower of sharp pointed sky-ranging shafts upon those
rangers of the firmament. Thus attacked, the mighty Gandharvas then
encountered the sons of Pandu with a shower of arrows equally thick, and
the Pandavas also replied by attacking those dwellers of heaven. And the
battle then, O Bharata, that ranged between the active and agile
Gandharvas and the impetuous son of Pandu was fierce in the extreme."

SECTION CCXLIII

Vaisampayana said, "Then those Gandharvas decked in golden garlands and
accomplished in celestial weapons, showing their blazing shafts,
encountered the Pandavas from every side. And as the sons of Pandu were
only four in number and the Gandharvas counted by thousands, the battle
that ensued appeared to be extraordinary. And as the cars of Karna and
Duryodhana had formerly been broken into a hundred fragments by the
Gandharvas, so were the cars of the four heroes attempted to be broken.
But those tigers among men began to encounter with their showers of
arrows thousands upon thousands of Gandharvas rushing towards them. Those
rangers of skies endued with great energy, thus checked on all sides by
that arrowy down-pour, succeeded not in even coming near to the sons of
Pandu. Then Arjuna whose ire had been provoked, aiming at the angry
Gandharvas, prepared to hurl against them his celestial weapons. And in
that encounter, the mighty Arjuna, by means of his Agneya weapon, sent
ten hundreds of thousands of Gandharvas to the abode of Yama. And that
mighty bowman, Bhima, also, that foremost of all warriors in battle,
slew, by means of his sharp arrows, Gandharvas by hundreds. And the
mighty sons of Madri also, battling with vigour, encountered hundreds of
Gandharvas, O king, and slaughtered them all. And as Gandharvas were
being thus slaughtered by the mighty warriors with their celestial
weapons, they rose up to the skies, taking with them the sons of
Dhritarashtra. But Dhananjaya, the son of Kunti, beholding them rise up
to the skies, surrounded them on every side by a wide net of arrows. And
confined within that arrow