CHAPTER XXXIV. Description of the Battle.
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
41. Hear the tremendous blows of weapons, like the blowing of an all destroying tornado, throwing down the elephants like craigs of mountains, with their long stretching tusks lying like water falls on the ground.
42. Lo! there the drivers of war chariots are stopped in their course, and striving to make their way through the puddles of blood, in which the wheels and horses of the car, are huddled together as in a bog of quagmire.
43. The jingling of arms and armours, and the jangling of swords and steel, resound, as the tinkling of the lute at the dancing of the dire and dreaded dame of death.
44. See the skirts of the sky reddened by the roseate particles, borne by the winds from the streams of blood, issuing out of the wounds in the bodies of men, horses and elephants lying dead in the field.
45. Look at the array of arrows formed in the air as a wreath of blossoms, and falling as the rays of lightnings from the dark black clouds of weapons hanging on high.
46. Lo! the surface of the earth filled with blood-red weapons, appearing as faggots of fire strewn over the ground in an universal conflagration.
47. The multitudes of commingled weapons, clashing with and breaking one another into pieces, are falling down in showers, like the innumerable rays of the sun.
48. The fighting of one man among the motionless many, is like the magic play of a magician[19] where the conjurer acts his parts amidst the bewitched beholders, Lo! there the indifferent spectators viewing the warfare as a dream (by their prajna or inward vision of the mind).
49. The field of battle, where all other sounds are hushed under the clashing of arms, resembles the stage of the martial god Bhairava, chanting his pitiless war song in jarring cacophony.
50. The battlefield is turned to a sea of blood, filled with the sands of pounded weapons, and rolling with the waves of broken discuses.
51. All the quarters under the regents of the sky, are filled with martial music loudly resounding on all sides; and the rebellowing hills seem to challenge one another, in their aerial flight and fighting (as in contest of the gods and titans of old).
52. Alas for shame! says one, that these arrows flung with such force from the bow strings, and flying with such loud hissing, and glittering as red hot lightnings in the air, are foiled in their aim of piercing the impenetrable armours, and driven back by them to hit at the stony hills.
53. Hear me friend, that art tired with the sight, that it is time for us to depart from this place, ere we are pierced in our bodies by these sharp arrows flashing as fire, and before the day runs its course of the fourth watch (evening).