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 due to foemen and to friends and kinsmen slain,
  None shall lack a fitting funeral, none shall perish on the plain.

Then, no one being there to dispute it, he took possession of the realm, always dutifully according precedence to his blind uncle, who deeply mourned his fallen sons.

Wishing to govern wisely, the eldest Pandav sought the wounded general, Bhishma,—­who still lay on his arrowy bed in the battle-field,—­and who, having given him rules for wise government, breathed his last in the presence of this Pandav, who saw his spirit rise from his divided skull and mount to the skies “like a bright star.”  The body was then covered with flowers and borne down to the Ganges, where, after it had been purified by the sacred waters, it was duly burned.

The new king’s mind was, however, so continually haunted by the horrors of the great battle-field that, hoping to find relief, he decided to perform a horse sacrifice.  Many chapters of the poem are taken up in relating the twelve adventures of this steed, which was accompanied everywhere by Arjuna, who had to wage many a fight to retain possession of the sacred animal and prevent any hand being laid upon him.  Then we have a full description of the seventeen ceremonies pertaining to this strange rite.