ith the method of fighting from the neck of an elephant,
quickly ascended that beast like a lion springing with a loud roar to the
top of a mountain summit. Then that lord of the prince of mountains,
striking the elephant with the hook, and inspired with rage, and with
that cool care for which he was distinguished in hurling weapons with
great force, quickly sped a lance, bright as Surya's rays, at the
preceptor's son and uttered a loud shout. Repeatedly shouting in joy,
"Thou art slain, Thou art slain!" Pandya (with that lance) crushed to
pieces the diadem of Drona's son adorned with foremost of jewels and
diamonds of the first water and the very best kind of gold and excellent
cloth and strings of pearls. That diadem possessed of the splendour of
the Sun, the Moon, the planets, or the fire, in consequence of the
violence of the stroke, fell down, split into fragments, like a mountain
summit riven by Indra's thunder, falling down on the Earth with great
noise. At this, Ashvatthama blazed up with exceeding rage like a prince
of snakes struck with the foot, and took up four and ten shafts capable
of inflicting great pain upon foes and each resembling the Destroyer's
rod. With five of those shafts he cut off the four feet and the trunk of
his adversary's elephant, and with three the two arms and the head of the
king, and with six he slew the six mighty car-warriors, endued with great
effulgence, that followed king Pandya. Those long and well-rounded arms
of the king, smeared with excellent sandal-paste, and adorned with gold
and pearls and gems and diamonds falling upon the Earth, began to writhe
like a couple of snakes slain by Garuda. That head also, graced with a
face bright as the full Moon, having a prominent nose and a pair of large
eyes, red as copper with rage, adorned with earrings, falling on the
ground, looked resplendent like the Moon himself between two bright
constellations. The elephant, thus cut off by that skilful warrior into
six pieces with those five shafts and the king into four pieces with
those three shafts lay divided in all into ten pieces that looked like
the sacrificial butter distributed into ten portions intended for the ten
deities. Having cut off numerous steeds and men and elephants into pieces
and offered them as food into the Rakshasas, king Pandya was thus quieted
by Drona's son with his shafts like a blazing fire in a crematorium,
extinguished with water after it has received a libation in