CHAPTER XXXVIII. Cessation of the War.
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Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
41. Some suffering under the agony of arrows piercing their mortal parts, thought upon the sins of their past lives, that had brought this pain upon them; while the blood sucking Vetálas, advanced with their horrid mouths for drinking the blood of the headless trunks (Kabandhas).
42. The floating flags and umbrellas and flappers, seemed as white lotuses in the lake of blood below, while the evening stretched her train of stars like red lotuses in the etherial sea above.
43. The battle field presented the appearance of an eighth sea of blood; the rathas or warcars forming its rocks, and their wheels its whirlpools; the flags being its foam and froth, and the white flappers as its bubbles. (There are seven seas only on record).
44. The field of blood with the scattered cars, appeared as a track of land plunged in mud and mire, and covered over with woods broken down and blown away by a hurricane.
45. It was as desolate as a country burnt down by a conflagration, and as the dry bed of the sea sucked up by the sage Agastya (the sun). It was as a district devastated by a sweeping flood.
46. It was filled with heaps of weapons, as high as the bodies of big elephants lying dead about the ground.
47. The lances which were carried down by the streams of blood, were as big as the palm trees growing on the summits of mountains. (Compare the description in Ossian’s poems).
48. The weapons sticking in the bodies of the elephants, seemed as the shining flowers growing on verdant trees: and the entrails torn and borne up by vultures, spread a fretted network in the sky.
49. The lances fixed beside the streams of blood, were as a woody forest on the bank of a river; and the flags floating on the surface, appeared as a bush of lotuses in the liquid-blood.
50. Dead bodies of men were drawn up by their friends, from the bloody pool in which they were drowned, and the embedded bodies of big elephants were marked by men by the jutting weapons sticking in them.
51. The trunks of trees which had their branches lopped off by the weapons, appeared as the headless bodies of slain soldiers, and the floating carcasses of elephants seemed as so many boats swimming in the sea of blood.
52. The white garments that were swept down by the current, seemed as the froth of the pool of blood, and were picked up by the servants sent to search them out.
53. The demoniac bodies of headless soldiers, were rising and falling in the field, and hurling large wheels and disks upon the flying army on all sides.
54. The dying warriors were frothing forth floods of blood from their throats, and stones stained with blood were inviting the greedy vultures to devour them.
55. Then there were groups of Sutála, Vetála and Uttála demons dancing their war dance about the field, and whirling the rafts of the broken cars upon the flying soldiers on all sides.
56. The stir and last gasp of those that were yet alive, were fearful to behold, and the faces of the dying and the dead that were covered in dust and blood, were pitiful to the beholder.
57. The devouring dogs and ravenous ravens beheld the last gasp of the dying with pity; while the feeders on carrions were howling and fighting on their common carcass, till many of them became dead bodies by their mutual fighting.
58. Now I have described the sea of blood, which flowed fast with the gore of unnumbered hosts of horses, elephants and camels, and of warriors and their leaders, and multitudes of cars, and war chariots; but it became a pleasure garden to the god of death, delighting in his bed of bloodshed, and grove of the weapons beset all around.