Reading section 83

12. Lo! There is a champion, hurling the blocks of stones, attached to the end of a chain reaching his feet; and another whirling his wheel with a wondrous log of wood, held in his uplifted arm.

13. There comes that combatant in the form of Yama, appearing from the region of Pluto (Preta), and spreading a horrid devastation all around. Come let us go hence as we came.

14. Look there the ravenous birds, greedily plunging their long necks in the cells of bodies just separated from their heads, and glutting themselves with the gushing blood; and see there the headless trunk of the slain, moving to and fro in the field of battle.

15. The eloquent among the spectators were talking to one another, about the frailty of human life, and the uncertainty of the time of their meeting in the next world.

16. Oh! the stern cannibal of death, says one, that devours in one swoop, whole bodies of the assembled armies, now weltering in blood; and levels the levelling hosts to the ground.

17. The showers of arrows falling on the bodies of elephants, resemble the showers of rain drops on mountain tops; and the darts sticking to their frontal bones, liken the bolts of lightening piercing the peaks of cliffs.

18. While the headless body of the beheaded, was groveling grievously on the ground for want of its head, the pate flying on high as a bird of air, proclaimed its immortality in heaven.

19. The army harassed by stones slung on their heads, cried to entrap the enemy in the snares set at their feet.

20. Wives that had become Apsarás (heavenly nymphs) after death, were now eager to claim their husbands, who were restored to their youth, by virtue of their falling in the field of battle.

21. The glaring light of the line of lances that had reached the skies, seemed as a flight of stairs or golden vistas, for the ascent of the brave to the gates of heaven.

22. The wife of the slain soldier, seeing now a heavenly goddess, taking possession of her husband’s fair gold-like breast, was looking about in search of another.

23. Generals, wailing loudly with their uplifted arms, over their fallen armies in the field, appeared as the cliffs of rocks, resounding to the clamorous surges below.

24. They cried out to fight the foremost in war, and to remove the wounded to the rear; and not to trample over the bodies of their own soldiers, now lying low on the ground.

25. Behold! there the Apsarás eagerly tying their loosened locks, and advancing with sobbing bosoms to receive the departed warriors, joining their company in their celestial forms.

26. Ah! receive them says one, who are our guests from afar, on the banks of the rivers of Paradise, decorated with lotus blossoms of golden hue, and entertain them with fresh water and cooling breeze.

27. Look! there the groups of weapons, broken into pieces like bones by their concussion, are huddled in the air with a jingling sound (kanatkára), and shining as stars in the sky.

28. Lo! the stream of deceased souls, flowing in arrowy currents and rolling in whirlpools of the flying disks, is rapidly gliding with the pebbles and stones, flung from the slings in the air.

29. The sky is become as a lake of lotuses with the lotiform heads of warriors flung aloft in the air, while the flying weapons are floating like their stalks in it, with the broken swords as their thorns all around.

30. The flying fragments of the flags, forming the folia of the plants, and the darts sticking to them, appear as big black bees fluttering about the flowers moving with the breeze.

31. The arrows sticking to the dead bodies of elephants, are as emmets on mountain tops, and as timid girls clinging to the bosoms of men.

32. The winds unfurling the curling locks of Vidyádhara females, indicate their approaching spousals, as the unfolding plumage of fowls are predictions of success in augury.

33. The lifted umbrellas are shining as so many moons on high and the moon shining above in the form of fair fame, spreads her light as a white canopy on earth.

34. The brave warrior, soon after his death, assumes a celestial form framed by his own merit, as a man in his sleep, attains to a state, he has imagined to himself in his waking.

35. The flying spears and lances and clubs and disks are hurtling in the air, like shoals of restless fishes and sharks, moving about incessantly in the troubled waters of the sea.

36. The milk-white rags of umbrellas, tattered and shattered by arrowy shafts, are flying as cranes in the crowded air, and appearing as the disk of the moon broken into a thousand pieces.

37. These waving flappers flying in the air with a hoarse gurgling (gharghara), seem as the waves of the sea lifted in the air, and undulating with a babbling noise in the ocean of the sky.

38. Those slips of the flappers and umbrellas, hashed by the slashing arms, appear as the laurels of glory flung aloft and flying in the regions of air.

39. Behold ye friends! how these flying arrows and showering spears, are approaching to us with hits of their spoil, like bodies of locusts, bearing away their verdant booty in the air.

40. Hearken to the clanking sound of the striking steel, in the uplifted arm of the armoured soldier, resounding like the loud larum of the regent of death.

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).

CHAPTER XXXV.

DESCRIPTION OF THE BATTLEFIELD.[20]

Vasishtha said:—Then the waves of horse troops mounting to the sky, made the battlefield appear as a raging sea.

2. The moving umbrellas floated as its foam and froth, and the feathered silvery arrows glided like the finny pearly fishes in it, while the high flight and rush of the cavalry, heaved and dashed as surges of the sea.

3. The rushing of the weapons resembled the running of its currents, and the circles of the soldiers were as vortices of its waters. The elephants were as its islets and their motions resembled the moving rocks in it.

4. The whirling disks were as its eddies, and the flying hairs on the heads likened its floating weeds. The sparkling sands were as its shining waters, and the flash of swords like its glassy spray.

5. The gigantic warriors were its whales and alligators, and the resounding caverns like its gurgling whirlpools.

6. The flying arrows were like its swimming fishes, and the floating flags likened its uprising waves and bores.

7. The shining weapons formed the waters of this ocean and their whirlpools also, while the long lines of forces appeared as the huge and horrible bodies of its whales.

8. Soldiers clad in black iron armour, were as the dark blue waters of the deep, and the headless bodies groveling in dust were as the eddies of the sea, with the encircled equipments as the sea weeds.

9. The showers of arrows had obscured the skies with a mist, and the confused rattlings of the battlefield, were as the roarings of the clouds.

10. The flying and falling heads of the slain soldiers, resembled the large drops of rain, and their bodies were as pieces of wood, whirling in the eddies of the disks.

11. The bold bowyer, bending his strong bow in the form of a curve, and leaping above the ground, resembled the spouting sea, rising from underneath the ground with his heaving waves on high.

12. The unnumbered umbrellas and flags, that were moving up and down in the field, were as the foaming and frothing sea, rolling in waves of blood, and carrying away the beams and timbers of the broken cars in its current.

13. The march of the army resembled the flowing of the sea waters, and the blood spouting from the wounds of the elephants likened its bubbles, while the moving horses and elephants represented the sea animals in their motion.

14. The battlefield had become like the wondrous field of the air, where the furious war, like a tremendous earthquake, shook the hills like moving clouds in the sky.

15. Here the waves were undulating like flights of birds in the air, and the groups of elephants falling aground like rocks, and the cowardly ranks were murmuring like herds of the timorous deer.

16. The field is turned to a forest of arrows, and wounded soldiers are standing fixed on the ground as trees, with the arrows flying as locusts, and the horses moving like antelopes in it.