“Sanjaya said, ’While Nakula was employed in destroying and routing the Kaurava divisions in battle with great force, Vikartana’s son Karna, filled with rage, checked him, O king.  Then Nakula smiling the while, addressed Karna, and said, “After a long time, through the favour of the gods, I am seen by thee, and thou also, O wretch, dost become the object of my sight.  Thou art the root of all these evils, this hostility, this quarrel.  It is through thy faults that the Kauravas are being thinned, encountering one another.  Slaying thee in battle today, I will regard myself as one that has achieved his object, and the fever of my heart will be dispelled.”  Thus addressed by Nakula, the Suta’s son said unto him the following words befitting a prince and a bowman in particular, “Strike me, O hero.  We desire to witness thy manliness.  Having achieved some feats in battle, O brave warrior, thou shouldst then boast.  O sire, they that are heroes fight in battle to the best of their powers, without indulging in brag.  Fight now with me to the best of thy might.  I will quell thy pride.”  Having said these words the Suta’s son quickly struck the son of Pandu and pierced him, in that encounter, with three and seventy shafts.  Then Nakula, O Bharata, thus pierced by the Suta’s son, pierced the latter in return with eighty shafts resembling snakes of virulent poison.  Then Karna, that great bowman, cutting off his antagonist’s bow with a number of arrows winged with gold and whetted on stone, afflicted him with thirty arrows.  Those arrows, piercing through his armour drank his blood in that battle, like the Nagas of virulent poison drinking water after having pierced through the Earth.  Then Nakula, taking up another formidable bow whose back was decked with gold, pierced Karna with twenty arrows and his driver with three.  Then, O monarch, that slayer of hostile heroes, viz., Nakula, filled with rage, cut off Karna’s bow with a razor-headed shaft of great keenness.  Smiling the while, the heroic son of Pandu then struck the bowless Karna, that foremost of car-warriors, with three hundred arrows.  Beholding Karna thus afflicted, O sire, by the son of Pandu, all the carwarriors there, with the gods (in the welkin), were filled with great wonder.  Then Vikartana’s son Karna taking up another bow, struck Nakula with five arrows in the shoulder-joint.  With those arrows sticking to him here, the son of Madri looked resplendent like the Sun with his own rays while shedding his light on the Earth.  Then Nakula piercing Karna with seven shafts, once more, O sire, cut off one of the horns of Karna’s bow.  Then Karna, taking up in that battle a tougher bow, filled the welkin on every side of Nakula with his arrows.  The mighty car-warrior, Nakula, however, thus suddenly shrouded with the arrows shot from Karna’s bow quickly cut off all those shafts with shafts of his own.  Then was seen overspread in the welkin a vast number of arrows like to the spectacle presented