Reading section 95

40. It hid the face of the earth and sky, like the diluvian waters reaching to the welkin’s face; making the army appear as a shoal of fishes, and the stars as gems shining in the deep.

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.

81. Showers of rain fell in floods with drops as big as _musalas_—malls or mallets, and with flashes of lightnings threatening as the stern glancings of the god of death.

82. Huge mists rising at first in the form of vapours of the earth, and then borne aloft by the heated air into the sky, seemed like titans to rise from the infernal regions (and then invade heaven with their gloomy armament).

83. The mirage of the warfare ceased after a while; as the worldly desires subside to rest upon tasting the sweet joys attending on divine knowledge.

84. The ground became full of mud and mire and was impassable in every part of it; and the forces of Sindhu were overflown by the watery deluge, like the river Sinde or the sea.

85. He then hurled his airy weapon which filled the vault of heaven with winds, and raged in all their fury like the Bhairava-Furies on the last day of resurrection.

86. The winds blew on all sides of the sky, with darts falling as thunder bolts, and hailstones now piercing and then crushing all bodies as by the last blast of nature on the dooms-day.

CHAPTER XLIX.

DESCRIPTION OF OTHER KINDS OF WEAPONS.

Then blew the icy winds of winter, blasting the beauty of the foliage of forest trees, and shaking and breaking the beautiful arbors, and covering them with gusts of dust.

2. Then rose the gale whirling the trees like birds flying in the air, dashing and smashing the soldiers on the ground, and hurling and breaking the edifices to dust.

3. This fearful squall blew away Vidúratha and his force, as a rapid current carries away the broken and rotten fragments of wood.

4. Then Vidúratha who was skilled in ballistics hurled his huge and heavy arrows, which stretched themselves to the sky, and withstood the force of the winds and rain.

5. Opposed by these rock-like barriers, the airy weapons were at a stand still, as the animal spirits are checked by the firm stoicity of the soul.

6. The trees which had been blown up by the winds and floating in the breezy air, now came down and fell upon the dead bodies, like flocks of crows upon putrid carcasses.

7. The shouting (shitkára) of the city, the distant hum (dátkára) of the village, the howling (bhánkára) of forests, and the rustling (utkára) of the trees, ceased on all sides like the vain verbiology of men.

8. Sindhu saw burning rocks (rockets?) falling from above like leaves of trees, and flying about as the winged Mainákas or moving rocks of the sea or Sinde (sindhu).

9. He then hurled his thundering weapons, falling as flaming thunderbolts from heaven, which burnt the rocks away as the flaming fire destroys the darkness.

10. These falling bolts broke the stones with their pointed ends, and hewed down the heads (tops) of the hills, like a hurricane scattering the fruits of trees on the ground.

11. Vidúratha then darted his Brahmá weapon to quell the thunderbolts, which jostling against one another, disappeared in their mutual conflict.