“Sanjaya said, ’Flying away in consequence of the falling of Arjuna’s arrows, the broken divisions of the Kauravas, staying at a distance, continued to gaze at Arjuna’s weapon swelling with energy and careering around with the effulgence of lightning.  Then Karna, with showers of terrible shafts, baffled that weapon of Arjuna while it was still careering in the welkin and which Arjuna had shot with great vigour in that fierce encounter for the destruction of his foe.  Indeed, that weapon (of Partha) which, swelling with energy, had been consuming the Kurus, the Suta’s son now crushed with his shafts winged with gold.  Bending then his own loud-sounding bow of irrefragable string, Karna shot showers of shafts.  The Suta’s son destroyed that burning weapon of Arjuna with his own foe-killing weapon of great power which he had obtained from Rama, and which resembled (in efficacy) an Atharvan rite.  And he pierced Partha also with numerous keen shafts.  The encounter then, O king, that took place between Arjuna and the son of Adhiratha, became a very dreadful one.  They continued to strike each other with arrows like two fierce elephants striking each other with their tusks.  All the points of the compass then became shrouded with weapons and the very sun became invisible.  Indeed, Karna and Partha, with their arrowy downpours, made the welkin one vast expanse of arrows without any space between.  All the Kauravas and the Somakas then beheld a wide-spread arrowy net.  In that dense darkness caused by arrows, they were unable to see anything else.  Those two foremost of men, both accomplished in weapons, as they incessantly aimed and shot innumerable arrows, O king, displayed diverse kinds of beautiful manoeuvres.  While they were thus contending with each other in battle, sometimes the Suta’s son prevailed over his rival and sometimes the diadem-decked Partha prevailed over his, in prowess and weapons and lightness of hands.  Beholding that terrible and awful passage-at-arms between those two heroes each of whom was desirous of availing himself of the other’s lapses, all the other warriors on the field of battle became filled with wonder.  The beings in the welkin, O king, applauded Karna and Arjuna.  Indeed, many of them at a time, filled with joy, cheerfully shouted, sometimes saying, “Excellent, O Karna!” and sometimes saying, “Excellent, O Arjuna!” During the progress of that fierce encounter, while the earth was being pressed deep with the weight of cars and the tread of steeds and elephants, the snake Aswasena, who was hostile to Arjuna, was passing his time in the nether region.  Freed from the conflagration at Khandava, O king, he had, from anger, penetrated through the earth (for going to the subterranean region).  That brave snake, recollecting the death of his mother and the enmity he on that account harboured against Arjuna, now rose from the lower region.  Endued with the power of ascending the skies, he soared up with great speed upon beholding that fight between