point of death. Covered also with the corpses of men and steeds
and elephants as also with crushed cars and other huge elephants with
their trunks and limbs cut off, the earth has become awful to look at
like the great Vaitarani (skirting the domains of Yama). Indeed, the
earth looketh even such, being strewn with other elephants, stretched on
the ground with trembling bodies and broken tusks, vomiting blood,
uttering soft cries in pain, deprived of the warriors on their backs,
divested of the armour that covered their limbs, and reft of the
foot-soldiers that protected their flank and rear, and with their quivers
and banners and standards displaced, their bodies adorned with housings
of gold struck deep with the weapons of the foe. The earth looked like
the cloud-covered welkin in consequence of being strewn with the fallen
bodies of elephant-warriors and horse-men and car-warriors, all of great
fame, and of foot-soldiers slain by foes fighting face to face, and
divested of armour and ornaments and attire and weapons. Covered with
thousands of fallen combatants mangled with arrows, fully exposed to
view, and deprived of consciousness, with some amongst them whose breaths
were returning slowly, the earth seemed as if covered with many
extinguished fires. With those foremost of heroes among both the Kurus
and the Srinjayas, pierced with arrows and deprived of life by Partha and
Karna, the earth seemed as if strewn with blazing planets fallen from the
firmament, or like the nocturnal firmament itself bespangled with blazing
planets of serene light. The shafts sped from the arms of Karna and
Arjuna, piercing through the bodies of elephants and steeds and men and
quickly stilling their lives, entered the earth like mighty snakes
entering their holes with heads bent downwards. The earth has become
impassable with heaps of slain men and steeds and elephants, and with
cars broken with the shafts of Dhananjaya and Adhiratha's son and with
the numberless shafts themselves shot by them. Strewn with well-equipped
cars crushed by means of mighty shafts along with the warriors and the
weapons and the standards upon them, cars, that is, with their traces
broken, their joints separated, their axles and yokes and Trivenus
reduced to fragments, their wheels loosened, their Upaskaras destroyed,
their Anukarsanas cut in pieces, the fastenings of their quivers cut off,
and their niches (for the accommodation of drivers) broken, strewn with
t