ys of yore in
great battle. Elephant-warriors and horsemen and car-warriors,--all
chastisers of foes,--inspired with desire of victory or impatient of
proceeding to heaven, fell fast on the field. Uttering loud shouts, they
pierced one another vigorously with well-shot arrows. In consequence of
those high-souled warriors of great courage shooting their arrows at one
another in that dreadful battle and by that means causing a darkness
there, the points of the compass, cardinal and subsidiary became
enveloped in gloom and the very effulgence of the sun became totally
shrouded.'"

80

"Sanjaya said, 'Then, O king, Dhananjaya, desirous of rescuing Kunti's
son Bhima who, assailed by many foremost of warriors of the Kuru army,
seemed to sink (under that attack), avoided, O Bharata, the troops of the
Suta's son and began, with his shafts, to despatch those hostile heroes
(that were opposed to Bhima) to the regions of death. Successive showers
of Arjuna's shafts were seen overspread on the sky, while others were
seen to slay thy army. Filling the welkin with his shafts that resembled
dense flights of feathery creatures, Dhananjaya, O monarch, at that time,
became the very Destroyer unto the Kurus. With his broad-headed arrows,
and those equipped with heads flat and sharp as razors, and cloth-yard
shafts of bright polish, Partha mangled the bodies of his foes and cut
off their heads. The field of battle became strewn with falling warriors,
some with bodies cut and mangled, some divested of armour and some
deprived of heads. Like the great Vaitarani (separating the regions of
life from those of the dead), the field of battle, O king, became uneven
and impassable and unsightly and terrible, in consequence of steeds and
cars and elephants, which struck with Dhananjaya's shafts, were mangled
and crushed and cut off in diverse ways. The earth was also covered with
broken shafts and wheels and axles, and with cars that were steedless or
that had their steeds and others that were driverless or that had their
drivers. Then four hundred well-trained and ever-furious elephants,
excited with wrath, and ridden by warriors cased in mail of golden hue
and adorned with ornaments of gold, and urged by fierce guides with
pressure of heels and toes, fell down, struck by the diadem-decked Arjuna
with his shafts, like loosened summits, peopled with living creatures, of
gigantic mountains. Indeed, the earth became covered with (other) huge
ele