Cut off with
broad-headed and crescent-shaped and razor-faced arrows, human heads,
resembling the lotus, the Sun, or the full Moon in beauty and resplendent
with diadems and necklaces and crowns, dropped ceaselessly on the earth.
Then the Kalinga, the Vanga, and the Nishada heroes, riding on elephants,
that resembled in splendour the elephant of the great foe of the daityas,
rushed with speed against the queller of the pride of the danavas, the
son of Pandu, from desire of slaying him. Partha cut off the vital limbs,
the trunks, the riders, the standards, and the banners of those
elephants, upon which those beasts fell down like mountain summits riven
with thunder. When that elephant force was broken, the diadem-decked
Arjuna shrouded the son of his preceptor with shafts endued with the
splendour of the newly risen Sun, like the wind shrouding the risen Sun
with masses of congregated clouds. Checking with his own shafts those of
Arjuna, Drona's son shrouding both Arjuna and Vasudeva with his arrows,
gave a loud roar, like a mass of clouds at the close of summer after
shrouding the Sun or the Moon in the firmament. Deeply afflicted with
those arrows, Arjuna, aiming his weapons at Ashvatthama and at those
followers of his belonging to the army, speedily dispelled that darkness
caused by Ashvatthama's arrows, and pierced all of them with shafts
equipped with goodly wings. In that battle none could see when Savyasaci
took up his shafts, when he aimed them, and when he let them off.
Pages:
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73