These fallen animals resemble
huge mountains riven with thunder, with their rocks and lofty trees and
herbs loosened from them and lying all around. The bells and iron hooks
and lances and standards with which those huge creatures had been
equipped are lying on the ground. Adorned with housings of gold, their
bodies are now bathed in blood. Some tracts, again, are covered with
fallen steeds, mangled with shafts, breathing hard in pain and vomitting
blood. Some of them are sending forth soft wails of pain, some are biting
the earth with rolling eyes and some are uttering piteous neighs.
Portions of the field are covered with horsemen and elephant-warriors
fallen off from their animals, and with bands of car-warriors forcibly
thrown down from their cars. Some of them are already dead and some are
at the point of death. Covered also with the corpses of men and steeds
and elephants as also with crushed cars and other huge elephants with
their trunks and limbs cut off, the earth has become awful to look at
like the great Vaitarani (skirting the domains of Yama). Indeed, the
earth looketh even such, being strewn with other elephants, stretched on
the ground with trembling bodies and broken tusks, vomiting blood,
uttering soft cries in pain, deprived of the warriors on their backs,
divested of the armour that covered their limbs, and reft of the
foot-soldiers that protected their flank and rear, and with their quivers
and banners and standards displaced, their bodies adorned with housings
of gold struck deep with the weapons of the foe.
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