Draupadi protests, like another Constance, saying, "War, war! no
peace! Peace is to me a war!" Krishna consoles her with the words,
"Weep not! the time has nearly come when the Kauravas will be slain,
both great and small, and their wives will mourn as you have been
mourning." The ferocity of the chief of the Kauravas prevails over the
wise counsels of the blind old king and the warnings of Krishna, so
that the fatal conflict must now begin upon the plain of Kurukshetra.

All is henceforth martial and stormy in the "parvas" that ensue. The
two enormous hosts march to the field, generalissimos are selected,
and defiances of the most violent and abusive sort exchanged. Yet
there are traces of a singular civilisation in the rules which the
leaders draw up to be observed in the war. Thus, no stratagems are to
be used; the fighting men are to fraternise, if they will, after each
combat; none may slay the flier, the unarmed, the charioteer, or the
beater of the drum; horsemen are not to attack footmen, and nobody is
to fling a spear till the preliminary challenges are finished; nor may
any third man interfere when two combatants are engaged. These curious
regulations--which would certainly much embarrass Von Moltke--are,
sooth to say, not very strictly observed, and, no doubt, were inserted
at a later age in the body of the poem by its Brahman editors. Those
same interpolaters have overloaded the account of the eighteen days of
terrific battle which follow with many episodes and interruptions,
some very eloquent and philosophic; indeed, the whole _Bhagavad-Gita_
comes in hereabouts as a religious interlude. Essays on laws, morals,
and the sciences are grafted, with lavish indifference to the
continuous flow of the narrative, upon its most important portions;
but there is enough of solid and tremendous fighting, notwithstanding,
to pale the crimson pages of the Greek Iliad itself. The field
glitters, indeed, with kings and princes in panoply of gold and
jewels, who engage in mighty and varied combats, till the earth swims
in blood, and the heavens themselves are obscured with dust and flying
weapons. One by one the Kaurava chiefs are slain, and Bhima, the
giant, at last meets in arms Duhsasana, the Kaurava prince who had
dragged Draupadi by the hair. He strikes him down with the terrible
mace of iron, after which he cuts off his head, and drinks of his
blood, saying, "Never have I tasted a draught so delicious as this."
So fu