Heavy with sleep, they laid themselves down on the bare earth. They had
been exceedingly tired and greatly mangled with shafts. The two great
car-warriors, Kripa and Kritavarma, succumbed to sleep. However deserving
of happiness and undeserving of misery, they then lay stretched on the
bare ground. Indeed, O monarch, those two who had always slept on costly
beds now slept, like helpless persons, on the bare ground, afflicted with
toil and grief.
Drona's son, however, O Bharata, yielding to the influence of wrath and
reverence, could not sleep, but continued to breathe like a snake.
Burning with rage, he could not get a wink of slumber. That hero of
mighty arms cast his eyes on every side of that terrible forest. As he
surveyed that forest peopled with diverse kinds of creatures, the great
warrior beheld a large banyan covered with crows. On that banyan
thousands of crows roosted in the night. Each perching separately from
its neighbour, those crows slept at ease, O Kauravya! As, however, those
birds were sleeping securely on every side, Ashvatthama beheld an owl of
terrible aspect suddenly make its appearance there. Of frightful cries
and gigantic body, with green eyes and tawny plumage, its nose was very
large and its talons were long. And the speed with which it came
resembled that of Garuda. Uttering soft cries that winged creature, O
Bharata, secretly approached the branches of that banyan. That ranger of
the sky, that slayer of crows, alighting on one of the branches of the
banyan, slew a large number of his sleeping enemies.
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