oth, Adhiratha's son of broad chest
looked resplendent like an Asoka or Palasa or Salmali decked with its
flowery load or a mountain overgrown with a forest of sandal trees.
Indeed, with those numerous arrows sticking to his body, Karna, O
monarch, in that battle, looked resplendent like the prince of mountains
with its top and glens overgrown with trees or decked with flowering
Karnikaras. Karna also shooting repeated showers of arrows, looked, with
those arrows constituting his rays, like the sun coursing towards the
Asta hills, with disc bright with crimson rays. Shafts, however, of keen
points, sped from Arjuna's arms, encountering in the welkin the blazing
arrows, resembling mighty snakes, sped from the arms of Adhiratha's son,
destroyed them all. Recovering his coolness, and shooting many shafts
that resembled angry snakes, Karna then pierced Partha with ten shafts
and Krishna with half a dozen, each of which looked like an angry snake.
Then Dhananjaya desired to shoot a mighty and terrible arrow, made wholly
of iron, resembling the poison of snake or fire in energy, and whose
whizz resembling the peal of Indra's thunder, and which was inspired with
the force of a high (celestial) weapon. At that time, when the hour of
Karna's death had come, Kala, approaching invisibly, and alluding to the
Brahmana's curse, and desirous of informing Karna that his death was
near, told him, "The Earth is devouring thy wheel!" Indeed, O foremost of
men, when the hour of Karna's death came, the high brahmastra that the
illustrious Bhargava had imparted unto him, escaped from his memory. And
the earth also began to devour the left wheel of his car. Then in
consequence of the curse of that foremost of Brahmanas, Karna's car began
to reel, having sunk deep into the earth and having been transfixed at
that spot like a sacred tree with its load of flowers standing upon an
elevated platform. When his car began to reel from the curse of the
Brahmana, and when the high weapon he had obtained from Rama no longer
shone in him through inward light, and when his terrible snake-mouthed
shaft also had been cut off by Partha, Karna became filled with
melancholy. Unable to endure all those calamities, he waved his arms and
began to rail at righteousness saying, "They that are conversant with
righteousness always say that righteousness protects those that are
righteous. As regards ourselves, we always endeavour, to the best of our
ability and knowledg