pressed deep with the weight
of cars and the tread of steeds and elephants, the snake Aswasena, who
was hostile to Arjuna, was passing his time in the nether region. Freed
from the conflagration at Khandava, O king, he had, from anger,
penetrated through the earth (for going to the subterranean region). That
brave snake, recollecting the death of his mother and the enmity he on
that account harboured against Arjuna, now rose from the lower region.
Endued with the power of ascending the skies, he soared up with great
speed upon beholding that fight between Karna and Arjuna. Thinking that
that was the time for gratifying his animosity towards, as he thought,
the wicked-souled Partha, he quickly entered into Karna's quiver, O king,
in the form of an arrow. At that time a net of arrows was seen, shedding
its bright arrows around. Karna and Partha made the welkin one dense mass
of arrows by means of their arrowy downpours. Beholding that wide-spread
expanse of arrows, all the Kauravas and the Somakas became filled with
fear. In that thick and awful darkness caused by arrows they were unable
to see anything else. Then those two tigers among men, those two foremost
of all bowmen in the world, those two heroes, fatigued with their
exertions in battle, looked at each other. Both of them were then fanned
with excellent and waving fans made of young (palm) leaves and sprinkled
with fragrant sandal-water by many Apsaras staying in the welkin. And
Sakra and Surya, using their hands, gently brushed the faces of those two
heroes. When at last Karna found that he could not prevail over Partha
and was exceedingly scorched with the shafts of the former, that hero,
his limbs very much mangled, set his heart upon that shaft of his which
lay singly within a quiver. The Suta's son then fixed on his bow-string
that foe-killing, exceedingly keen, snake-mouthed, blazing, and fierce
shaft, which had been polished according to rule, and which he had long
kept for the sake of Partha's destruction. Stretching his bow-string to
his ear, Karna fixed that shaft of fierce energy and blazing splendour,
that ever-worshipped weapon which lay within a golden quiver amid sandal
dust, and aimed it at Partha. Indeed, he aimed that blazing arrow, born
in Airavata's race, for cutting off Phalguna's head in battle. All the
points of the compass and the welkin became ablaze and terrible meteors,
and thunderbolts fell. When that snake of the form of an arrow was fix