succeeded as leader of the Kurus by the tutor Drona, who during
his five days' generalship proved almost invincible. But, some one
suggesting that his courage would evaporate should he hear his son was
dead, a cry arose in the Pandav ranks that Aswathaman had perished!
Unable to credit this news, Drona called to the eldest Pandav--who was
strictly truthful--to know whether it was so, and heard him rejoin it
was true in regard to the elephant by that name, but not of the man.

Said Yudhishthir: "Lordly tusker, Aswathaman named, is dead;"
Drona heard but half the accents, feebly dropped his sinking head!

The poor father, who heard only a small part of the sentence--the
remainder being drowned by the sound of the trumpets--lost all
courage, and allowed himself to be slain without further resistance.

The whole poem bristles with thrilling hand-to-hand conflicts, the
three greatest during the eighteen days' battle being between Karna
and the eldest Pandav, between the eldest Kuru and Bhima, and between
Karna and Arjuna. During the first sixteen days of battle, countless
men were slain, including Arjuna's son by one of his many wives.
Although the fighting had hitherto invariably ceased at sunset,
darkness on the seventeenth day failed to check the fury of the
fighters, so when the moon refused to afford them light they kindled
torches in order to find each other. It was therefore midnight before
the exhausted combatants dropped down on the battle-field, pillowing
their heads on their horses and elephants to snatch a brief rest so as
to be able to renew the war of extermination on the morrow.

On the eighteenth day--the last of the Great War--the soil showed red
with blood and was so thickly strewn with corpses that there was no
room to move. Although the Kurus again charged boldly, all but three
were slain by the enemies' golden maces. In fact, the fight of the day
proved so fierce that only eleven men remained alive of the billions
which, according to the poem, took part in the fight. But during that
night the three remaining Kurus stole into the Pandav camp, killed the
five sons which Draupadi had born to her five husbands, carried off
their heads, and laid them at the feet of the mortally wounded eldest
Kuru, who fancied at first his cousins had been slain. The battle
ending from sheer lack of combatants, the eldest Pandav ordered solemn
funeral rites, which are duly described in the poem.

Pious rites are du