despatched Citravarman with a number of keen shafts, and then the latter’s driver, O sire, with a keen calf-toothed arrow.  Filled with rage, the mighty Partha then, with hundreds of shafts, felled the samsaptakas in hundreds and thousands.  Then, O king, with a razor-headed arrow equipped with wings of silver, that mighty car-warrior cut off the head of the illustrious Mitrasena.  Filled with rage he then struck Susharma in the shoulder-joint.  Then all the samsaptakas, filled with wrath, encompassed Dhananjaya on all sides and began to afflict him with showers of weapons and make all the points of the compass resound with their shouts.  Afflicted by them thus, the mighty car-warrior Jishnu, of immeasurable soul, endued with prowess resembling that of Sakra himself, invoked the Aindra weapon.  From that weapon, thousands of shafts, O king, began to issue continually.  Then O king, a loud din was heard of falling cars with standards and quivers and yokes, and axles and wheels and traces with chords, of bottoms of cars and wooden fences around them, of arrows and steeds and spears and swords, and maces and spiked clubs and darts and lances and axes, and Sataghnis equipped with wheels and arrows.  Thighs and necklaces and Angadas and Keyuras, O sire, and garlands and cuirasses and coats of mail, O Bharata, and umbrellas and fans and heads decked with diadems lay on the battle-field.  Heads adorned with earrings and beautiful eyes, and each resembling the full moon, looked, as they lay on the field, like stars in the firmament.  Adorned with sandal-paste, beautiful garlands of flowers and excellent robes, many were the bodies of slain warriors that were seen to lie on the ground.  The field of battle, terrible as it was, looked like the welkin teeming with vapoury forms.  With the slain princes and kshatriyas of great might and fallen elephants and steeds, the Earth became impassable in that battle as if she were strewn with hills.  There was no path on the field for the wheels of the illustrious Pandava’s car, engaged as he was in continually slaying his foes and striking down elephants and steeds with his broad-headed shafts.  It seemed, O sire, that the wheels of his car stopped in fright at the sight of his own self careering in that battle through that bloody mire.  His steeds, however, endued with the speed of the mind or the wind, dragged with great efforts and labour those wheels that had refused to move.  Thus slaughtered by Pandu’s son armed with the bow, that host fled away almost entirely, without leaving even a remnant, O Bharata, contending with the foe.  Having vanquished large numbers of the samsaptakas in battle, Pritha’s son Jishnu looked resplendent, like a blazing fire without smoke.’”

28