forms resembling two huge hills topped with trees,
each, fighting with the other as it liked. Those
two heroes, then, whose elephants thus encountered
each other, forcibly struck each other with lances
endued with the splendour of solar rays, and uttered
loud roars. Separating, they then careered in
circles with their elephants, and each taking up a
bow began to strike the other. Gladdening the
people around with their loud roars and the slaps on
their armpits and the whizz of this arrows, they continued
to utter leonine shouts. Endued with great strength,
both of them, accomplished in weapons, fought, using
their elephants with upturned trunks and decked with
banners floating on the wind. Then each cutting
off the other’s bow, they roared at each other,
and rained on each other showers of darts and lances
like two masses of clouds in the rainy season pouring
torrents of rain. Then Kshemadhurti pierced Bhimasena
in the centre of the chest with a lance endued with
great impetuosity, and then with six others, and uttered
a loud shout. With those lances sticking to his
body, Bhimasena, whose form then blazed with wrath,
looked resplendent like the cloud-covered Sun with
his rays issuing through the interstices of that canopy.
Then Bhima carefully hurled at his antagonist a lance
bright as the rays of the Sun, coursing perfectly
straight, and made entirely of iron. The ruler
of the Kulutas then, drawing his bow, cut off that
lance with ten shafts and then pierced the son of
Pandu with sixty shafts. Then Bhima the son of
Pandu, taking up a bow whose twang resembled the roar
of the clouds, uttered a loud shout and deeply afflicted
with his shafts the elephants of his antagonist.
Thus afflicted in that battle by Bhimasena with his
arrows, that elephant, though sought to be restrained,
stayed not on the field like a wind-blown cloud.
The fierce prince of elephants owned by Bhima then
pursued his (flying) compeer, like a wind-blown mass
of clouds pursuing another mass driven by the tempest.
Restraining his own elephant valiant Kshemadhurti
pierced with his shafts the pursuing elephant of Bhimasena.
Then with a well-shot razor-headed arrow that was
perfectly straight, Kshemadhurti cut off his antagonist’s
bow and then afflicted that hostile elephant.
Filled with wrath, Kshemadhurti then, in that battle,
pierced Bhima and struck his elephant with many long
shafts in every vital part. That huge elephant
of Bhima then fell down, O Bharata! Bhima, however,
who had jumped down from his elephant and stood on
the Earth before the fall of the beast, then crushed
the elephant of his antagonist with his mace.
And Vrikodara then struck Kshemadhurti also, who,
jumped down from his crushed elephant, was advancing
against him with uplifted weapon. Kshemadhurti,
thus struck, fell down lifeless, with the sword in
his arm, by the side of his elephant, like a lion
struck down by thunder beside a thunder-riven hill.
Beholding the celebrated king of the Kulutas slain,
thy troops, O bull of Bharata’s race exceedingly
distressed, fled away.’”