CHAPTER XLVIII. Description of Daivástras or Supernatural Weapons.[23]
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
41. The overspreading darkness appeared as a sea of ink or dark quagmire, or as the particles of Anjanagiri (Inky mountain) wafted by the breeze over the face of nature.
42. All beings seemed to be immersed in the sea or darkness, and to lose their energies as in the deep gloom of midnight.
43. Vidúratha the best of the most skilful in ballistics, shot his sun-bright shot which like the sun illumined the vault of the sky.
44. It rose high amidst the overspreading darkness like the sun (Agastya) with his effulgent beams, and dispelled the shades of darkness, as autumn does the rainy clouds.
45. The sky being cleared of its veil of darkness, manifested itself with its reddish clouds, resembling the blowzy bodices of damsels before the king. (Here is a pun upon the word payodhara which means both a cloud and the breast of a woman).
46. Now the landscape appeared in full view, like the understanding (good sense) of men coming in full play after the extinction of their avarice.
47. The enraged Sindhu then laid hold on his dreadful Rákshasa weapon, which he instantly flung on his foe with its bedeviled darts.
48. These horrid and destructive darts flew on all sides in the air, and roared as the roaring sea and elephantine clouds (dighastis) of heaven.
49. They were as the flames of lambent fire, with their long licking tongues and ash-coloured and smoky curls, rising as hoary hairs on the head, and making a chat-chat sound like that of moist fuel set up on fire.
50. They wheeled round in circles through the air, with a horrible tangtang noise, now flaming as fire and now fuming as smoke, and then flying about as sparks of fire.
51. With mouths beset by rows of sprouting teeth like lotus stalks, and faces defaced by dirty and fusty eyes, their hairy bodies were as stagnate pools full of moss and weeds.
52. They flew about and flashed and roared aloud as some dark clouds, while the locks of hairs on their heads glared as lightnings in the midway sky.
53. At this instant Vidúratha the spouse of Lílá, sent forth his Náráyana weapon, having the power of suppressing wicked spirits and demons.
54. The appearance of this magic weapon, made the bodies of the Rákshasas, disappear as darkness at sun rise.
55. The whole army of these fiends was lost in the air, as the sable clouds of the rainy season, vanish into nothing at the approach of autumn.
56. Then Sindhu discharged his fire arms which set fire to the sky, and began to burn down every thing, as by the all destroying conflagration of the last day.
57. They filled all the sides of air with clouds of smoke, which seemed to hide the face of heaven under the darkness of hell.
58. They set fire to the woods in the hills, which burned like mountains of gold; while the trees appeared to bloom with yellow champaka flowers all around.
59. All the sides of the sky above, and the hills, woods and groves below, were enveloped in the flames, as if they were covered under the red powder of huli, with which Yama was sporting over the plain.
60. The heaven-spreading flame burnt down the legions in one heap of ashes, as the submarine fire consumes whole bodies of the fleet and navy in the sea.
61. As Sindhu continued to dart his firearms against his vanquished adversary, Vidúratha let off his watery arms with reverential regard.
62. These filled with water, flew forward as the shades of darkness from their hidden cells; and spread up and down and on all sides, like a melted mountain gushing in a hundred cataracts.
63. They stretched as mountainous clouds or as a sea in the air, and fell in showers of watery arrows and stones on the ground.
64. They flew up like large tamála trees, and being gathered in groups like the shades of night, appeared as the thick gloom beyond the lokáloka or polar mountains.
65. They gave the sky the appearance of subterraneous caves, emitting a gurgling sound (ghurghura) like the loud roaring of elephants.
66. These waters soon drank (cooled) the spreading furious fire, as the shades of the dark night swallow (efface) the surrounding red tints of the evening.
67. Having swallowed the fires above, the waters overflooded the ground and filled it with a humidity which served to enervate all bodies, as the power of sleep numbs every body in death-like torpidity.
68. In this manner both the kings were throwing their enchanted weapons against each other, and found them equally quelling and repelling one another in their course.
69. The heavy armed soldiers of Sindhu and the captains of his regiments were swept away by the flood, together with the warcars which floated upon it.
70. At this moment, Sindhu thought upon his anhydrous weapons (soshanástre—thermal arms), which possessed the miraculous power of preserving his people from the water, and hurled them in the air.
71. These absorbed the waters as the sun sucks up the moisture of the night, and dried up the land and revived the soldiers, except those that were already dead and gone.
72. Their heat chased the coldness as the rage of the illiterate enrages the learned, and made the moist ground as dry, as when the sultry winds strew the forest land with dried leaves.
73. It decorated the face of the ground with a golden hue, as when the royal dames adorn their persons with a yellow paint or ointment.
74. It put the soldiers on the opposite side to a state of feverish (or blood heated) fainting, as when the tender leaves of trees are scorched by the warmth of a wild fire in summer heat.
75. Vidúratha in his rage of warfare laid hold on his bow (kodanda), and having bent it to a curve, let fly his cloudy arms on his antagonist.
76. They sent forth columns of clouds as thick as the sable shades of night, which flying upward as a forest of dark tamála trees, spread an umbrage heavy with water on high.
77. They lowered under the weight of their water, and stood still by their massive thickness; and roared aloud in their circles all over the sky.
78. Then blew the winds dropping the dewdrops of the icy store they bore on their pinions; and showers of rain fell fast from the collections of the clouds on high.
79. Then flashed the fiery lightnings from them like golden serpents in their serpentine course or rather like the aslant glances of the eyes of heavenly nymphs.
80. The roarings of the clouds rebounded in the mountainous caverns of the sky, and the quarters of heaven re-echoed to the same with the hoarse noise of elephants and the roaring of lions and growling of tigers and bears.