heroes desirous of reaching the end of the hostilities.  Loud became the noise caused by the sound of bow-strings and fences and bows, the grunt of elephants, and the shouts of foot-soldiers and falling men.  Hearing the terrible whizz of arrows and the diverse shouts of brave warriors, the troops took fright, became pale, and fell down.  Large numbers of those foes thus employed in shouting and shooting weapons, the heroic son of Adhiratha crushed with his arrows.  With his shafts Karna then despatched to Yama’s abode twenty car-warriors among the brave Pancala heroes, with their steeds, drivers, and standards.  Then many foremost of warriors of the Pandava army, endued with great energy and quick in the use of weapons, speedily wheeling round, encompassed Karna on all sides.  Karna agitated that hostile force with showers of weapons like the leader of an elephantine herd plunging into a lake adorned with lotuses and covered with swans.  Penetrating into the midst of his foes, the son of Radha, shaking his best of bows, began to strike off and fell their heads with his sharp shafts.  The shield and coats of mail of the warriors, cut off, fell down on the Earth.  There was none amongst them that needed the touch of a second arrow of Karna’s.  Like a driver striking the steeds with the whip, Karna, with his shafts capable of crushing coats of mail and bodies and the life that quickened them, struck the fences (of his foes) perceivable only by their bow-strings.  Like a lion grinding herds of deer, Karna speedily grinded all those Pandus and Srinjayas and Pancalas that came within range of his arrows.  Then the chief of the Pancalas, and the sons of Draupadi, O sire, and the twins, and Yuyudhana, uniting together, proceeded against Karna.  When those Kurus, and Pancalas and Pandus were thus engaged in battle, the other warriors, reckless of their very lives, began to strike at one another.  Well-cased in armour and coats of mail and adorned with head-gears, combatants endued with great strength rushed at their foes, with maces and short clubs and spiked bludgeons looking like uplifted rods of the Destroyer, and jumping, O sire, and challenging one another, uttered loud shouts.  They struck one another, and fell down, assailed by one another with blood rising from their limbs and deprived of brains and eyes and weapons.  Covered with weapons, some, as they lay there with faces beautiful as pomegranates, having teeth-adorned mouths filled with blood, seemed to be alive.  Others, in that vast ocean of battle, filled with rage mangled or cut or pierced or overthrew or lopped off or slew one another with battle-axes and short arrows and hooks and spears and lances.  Slain by one another they fell down, covered with blood and deprived of life like sandal trees cut down with the axe falling down and shedding as they fall their cool blood-red juice.  Cars destroyed by cars, elephants by elephants, men by men, and steeds by steeds, fell down in thousands.  Standards, and heads, and