well-equipped cars bearing lofty standards, followed Dhananjaya who was proceeding with great speed like Indra proceeding for the slaughter of Vritra.  Then those mighty car-warriors, Shikhandi and Satyaki and the twins, proceeding in the direction of Dhananjaya, checked those foes and, piercing them with keen arrows, uttered terrible roars.  Then the Kuru heroes and the Srinjayas, encountering one another with rage, slew one another with straight shafts of great energy, like the Asuras and the celestials in days of yore in great battle.  Elephant-warriors and horsemen and car-warriors,—­all chastisers of foes,—­inspired with desire of victory or impatient of proceeding to heaven, fell fast on the field.  Uttering loud shouts, they pierced one another vigorously with well-shot arrows.  In consequence of those high-souled warriors of great courage shooting their arrows at one another in that dreadful battle and by that means causing a darkness there, the points of the compass, cardinal and subsidiary became enveloped in gloom and the very effulgence of the sun became totally shrouded.’”

80

“Sanjaya said, ’Then, O king, Dhananjaya, desirous of rescuing Kunti’s son Bhima who, assailed by many, foremost of warriors of the Kuru army, seemed to sink (under that attack), avoided, O Bharata, the troops of the Suta’s son and began, with his shafts, to despatch those hostile heroes (that were opposed to Bhima) to the regions of death.  Successive showers of Arjuna’s shafts were seen overspread on the sky, while others were seen to slay thy army.  Filling the welkin with his shafts that resembled dense flights of feathery creatures, Dhananjaya, O monarch, at that time, became the very Destroyer unto the Kurus.  With his broad-headed arrows, and those equipped with heads flat and sharp as razors, and cloth-yard shafts of bright polish, Partha mangled the bodies of his foes and cut off their heads.  The field of battle became strewn with falling warriors, some with bodies cut and mangled, some divested of armour and some deprived of heads.  Like the great Vaitarani (separating the regions of life from those of the dead), the field of battle, O king, became uneven and impassable and unsightly and terrible, in consequence of steeds and cars and elephants, which struck with Dhananjaya’s shafts, were mangled and crushed and cut off in diverse ways.  The earth was also covered with broken shafts and wheels and axles, and with cars that were steedless or that had their steeds and others that were driverless or that had their drivers.  Then four hundred well-trained and ever-furious elephants, excited with wrath, and ridden by warriors cased in mail of golden hue and adorned with ornaments of gold, and urged by fierce guides with pressure of heels and toes, fell down, struck by the diadem-decked Arjuna with his shafts, like loosened summits, peopled with living creatures, of gigantic mountains.  Indeed, the earth became covered with (other) huge