CHAPTER L. Death of Vidúratha.
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Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
41. His strong breast-plate is broken also by slabs of stone and his big head is pierced by pointed arrows. Behold him thrown down on earth, all mangled in blood.
42. Look with what difficulty he is restored to his senses, and seated in his seat with his arm cut off and bleeding under Sindhu’s sword.
43. See him weltering in blood gushing out profusely from his body, like a rubicund stream issuing from a hill of rubies. Woe is me! and cursed be the sword of Sindhu that hath brought this misery on us.
44. It has severed his thighs as they dissever a tree with a saw, and has lopped off his legs like the stalks of trees.
45. Ah! it is I that am so struck and wounded and killed by the enemy. I am dead and gone and burnt away with my husband’s body.
46. Saying so, she began to shudder with fear at the woeful sight of her husband’s person, and fell insensible on the ground like a creeper cut off by an axe.
47. Vidúratha though thus mutilated and disabled, was rising to smite the enemy in his rage, when he fell down from his car like an uprooted tree, and was replaced there by his charioteer ready to make his retreat.
48. At this instant, the savage Sindhu struck a sabre on his neck, and pursued the car in which the dying monarch was borne back to his tent.
49. The body of Padma (alias Vidúratha), was placed like a lotus in the presence of Sarasvatí, shining with the splendour of the sun; but the elated Sindhu was kept from entering that abode, like a giddy fly from a flame.
50. The charioteer entered in the apartment, and placed the body in its death-bed, all mangled and besmeared with blood, exuding from the pores of the severed neck, in the presence of the goddess, from where the enemy returned to his camp.
(Gloss). Here Padma fighting in the person of Vidúratha, and falling bravely in the field, obtained his redemption by his death in the presence of the goddess; but the savage Sindhu, who slew his foiled foe in his retreat, proved a ruffian in his barbarous act, and could have no admittance into the presence of the goddess and to his future salvation.