reered in that battle, displaying his quickness in the
use of weapons. Shikhandi, supported by the Prabhadrakas, fought with two
Kuru bowmen, Kritavarma and the great car-warrior Kripa. Then also, O
monarch, that battle became fierce and awful since the warriors were all
resolved to lay down their lives and since all of them fought, making
life the stake. Shalya, shooting showers of shafts on all sides,
afflicted the Pandavas with Satyaki and Vrikodara amongst them. With
patience and great strength, O monarch, the king of the Madras at the
same time fought with the twins (Nakula and Sahadeva), each of whom
resembled the Destroyer himself in prowess. The great car-warriors among
the Pandavas who were mangled in that great battle with the shafts of
Shalya, failed to find a protector. Then the heroic Nakula, the son of
Madri, seeing king Yudhishthira the just greatly afflicted, rushed with
speed against his maternal uncle. Shrouding Shalya in that battle (with
many arrows), Nakula, that slayer of hostile heroes, smiling the while,
pierced him in the centre of the chest with ten arrows, made entirely of
iron, polished by the hands of the smith, equipped with wings of gold,
whetted on stone, and propelled from his bow with great force. Afflicted
by his illustrious nephew, Shalya afflicted his nephew in return with
many straight arrows. Then king Yudhishthira, and Bhimasena, and Satyaki,
and Sahadeva, the son of Madri, all rushed against the ruler of the
Madras. The vanquisher of foes, the generalissimo of the Kuru army,
received in that battle all those heroes that rushed towards him quickly,
filling the cardinal and the subsidiary points of the compass with the
rattle of their cars and causing the Earth to tremble therewith. Piercing
Yudhishthira with three arrows and Bhima with seven, Shalya pierced
Satyaki with a hundred arrows in that battle and Sahadeva with three.
Then the ruler of the Madras, O sire, cut off, with a razor-headed arrow,
the bow with arrow fixed on it of the high-souled Nakula. Struck with
Shalya's shafts, that bow broke into pieces. Taking up another bow,
Madri's son, that great car-warrior quickly covered the ruler of the
Madras with winged arrows. Then Yudhishthira and Sahadeva, O sire, each
pierced the ruler of the Madras with ten arrows in the chest. Bhimasena
and Satyaki, rushing at the ruler of the Madras, both struck him with
arrows winged with Kanka feathers, the former with sixty, and the latter