re seen, lying on the ground, of fallen steeds with their riders. A
river appeared on the field of battle, flowing towards the other world.
Blood formed its waters and cars its eddies. Standards formed its trees,
and bones its pebbles. The arms (of combatants) were its alligators, bows
its current, elephants its large rocks, and steeds its smaller ones. Fat
and marrow formed its mire, umbrellas its swans, and maces its rafts.
Abounding with armour and head-gears, banners constituted its beautiful
trees. Teeming with wheels that formed its swarms of Chakravakas, it was
covered with Trivenus and Dandas. Inspiring the brave with delight and
enhancing the fears of the timid, that fierce river set in, whose shores
abounded with Kurus and Srinjayas. Those brave warriors, with arms
resembling spiked bludgeons, by the aid of their vehicles and animals
serving the purposes of rafts and boats, crossed that awful river which
ran towards the region of the dead. During the progress of that battle, O
monarch, in which no consideration was shown by anybody for anyone, and
which, fraught with awful destruction of the four kinds of forces,
therefore, resembled the battle between the gods and the Asuras in days
of old, some among the combatants, O scorcher of foes, loudly called upon
their kinsmen and friends. Some, called upon by crying kinsmen, returned,
afflicted with fear. During the progress of that fierce and awful battle,
Arjuna and Bhimasena stupefied their foes. That vast host of thine, O
ruler of men, thus slaughtered, swooned away on the field, like a woman
under the influence of liquor. Having stupefied that army, Bhimasena and
Dhananjaya blew their conchs and uttered leonine roars. As soon as they
heard that loud peal, Dhrishtadyumna and Shikhandi, placing king
Yudhishthira at their head, rushed against the ruler of the Madras.
Exceedingly wonderful and terrible, O monarch, was the manner in which
those heroes, unitedly and as separate bodies, then fought with Shalya.
The two sons of Madri, endued with great activity, accomplished in
weapons, and invincible in battle, proceeded with great speed against thy
host, inspired with desire of victory. Then thy army, O bull of Bharata's
race, mangled in diverse ways with shafts by the Pandavas eager for
victory, began to fly away from the field. That host, thus struck and
broken by firm bowmen, O monarch, fled away on all sides in the very
sight of thy sons. Loud cries of "Oh!" and "Al