Reading section 96

12. Sindhu then cast his demoniac weapons (Pisáchástras) as black as darkness, which fled as lines of horrid Pisácha demons on all sides.

13. They filled the firmament with the darkness of their bodies, and made the daylight turn to the shade of night, as if it were for fear of them.

14. They were as stalwart in their figures as huge columns of smoke, and as dark in their complexion as the blackest pitch, and tangible by the hand.

15. They were as lean skeletons with erect hairs on their heads and bearded faces, with looks as pale as those of beggars, and bodies as black as those of the aerial and nocturnal fiends.

16. They were terrific and like idiots in their looks, and moved about with bones and skulls in their hands. They were as meagre as churls, but more cruel than either the sword or thunderbolt.

17. The Pisáchas lurk about the woods, bogs and highways, and pry into empty and open door houses. They hunt about as ghosts in their dark forms, and fly away as fast as the fleeting lightning.

18. They ran and attacked with fury the remaining forces of the enemy, that stood weaponless in the field, with their broken and sorrowful hearts.

19. Frightened to death they stood motionless, and dropped down their arms and armours, and stood petrified as if they were demon-struck, with staring eyes, open mouths, and unmoving hands and feet.

20. They let fall both their lower and upper garments, loosened their bowels and slakened their bodies through fear, and kept shaking as fixed trees by the winds.

21. The line of the Pisáchas then advanced to frighten Vidúratha out of his wits, but he had the good sense to understand them as the mere Mumbo-jumbos of magic.

22. He knew the counter charm to fight out the Pisáchas from the field, and employed his charmed weapons against the Pisácha army of his enemy.

23. He darted in his ire the Rúpiká weapon, which gave comfort to his own army, and deluded the Pisácha force of his adversary.

24. These Rúpikás flew in the air with erect hairs on their heads; their terrific eyes were sunk in their sockets, and their waists and breasts moved as trees with bunches of fruit.

25. They had past their youth and become old; and their bodies were bulky and worn out with age; they had deformed backs and hips, and protuberant navels and naves.

26. They had dark dusky bodies, and held human skulls in their hands all besmeared with blood. They had bits of half devoured flesh in their mouths, and pouring out fresh blood from their sides.

27. They had a variety of gestures, motions and contortions of their bodies, which were as hard as stone, with wry faces, crooked backs and twisted legs and limbs.

28. Some had their faces like those of dogs, crows, and owls, with broad mouths and flat cheek-bones and bellies, and held human skulls and entrails in their hands.

29. They laid hold of the Pisáchas as men catch little boys, and joined with them in one body as their consorts. (_i.e._ The Rúpiká witches bewitching the demoniac Pisáchas, got the better of them).

30. They joined together in dancing and singing with outstretched arms and mouths and eyes, now joining hand in hand and now pursuing one another in their merry sport.

31. They stretched their long tongues from their horrid mouths, and licked away the blood exuding from the wounds of the dead bodies.

32. They plunged in the pool of blood with as much delight, as if they dived in a pond of ghee, and scrabbled in the bloody puddle with outstretched arms and feet, and uplifted ears and nose.

33. They rolled and jostled with one another in the puddle of carrion and blood, and made it swell like the milky ocean when churned by the Mandara mountain.

34. As Vidúratha employed his magic weapon against the magic of Sindhu, so he had recourse to others from a sense of his inferiority.

35. He darted his Vetála weapon, which made the dead bodies, whether with or without their heads, to rise up in a body in their ghastly shapes.

36. The joint forces of the Vetálas, Pisáchas and Rúpikás presented a dreadful appearance as that of the Kavandhas, and seemed as they were ready to destroy the earth.

37. The other monarch was not slow to show his magical skill, by hurling his Rákshasa weapon, which threatened to grasp and devour the three worlds.

38. These with their gigantic bodies rose as high as mountains, and seemed as hellish fiends appearing from the infernal regions in their ghostly forms.

39. The ferocious body of the roaring Rákshasas, terrified both the gods and demigods (surásuras), by their loud martial music and war dance of their headless trunks (Kavandhas).

40. The giddy Vetálas, Yakshas and Kushmándas, devoured the fat and flesh of dead bodies as their toast, and drank the gory blood as their lurid wines in the coarse of their war dance.

41. The hopping and jumping of the Kushmándas, in their war dance in streams of blood, scattered its crimson particles in the air, which assembled in the form of a bridge of red evening clouds over the sparkling sea.

CHAPTER L.

DEATH OF VIDÚRATHA.

Vasishtha said:—As the tide of war was rolling violently with a general massacre on both sides, the belligerent monarchs thought on the means of saving their own forces from the impending ruin.

2. The magnanimous Sindhurája, who was armed with patience, called to his mind the Vaishnava weapon, which was the greatest of arms and as powerful as Siva (Jove) himself.

3. No sooner was the Vaishnava weapon hurled by him with his best judgment (mantra), than it emitted a thousand sparks of fire from its flaming blade on all sides.

4. These sparks enlarged into balls, as big and bright as to shine like hundreds of suns in the sky, and others flew as the lengthy shafts of cudgels in the air.

5. Some of them filled the wide field of the firmament with thunderbolts as thick as the blades of grass, and others overspread the lake of heaven, with battle axes as a bed of lotuses.

6. These poured forth showers of pointed arrows spreading as a net-work in the sky, and darted the sable blades of swords, scattered as the leaves of trees in the air.

7. At this time, the rival king Vidúratha, sent forth another Vaishnava weapon for repelling the former, and removing the reliance of his foe in his foible.

8. It sent forth a stream of weapons counteracting those of the other, and overflowing in currents of arrows and pikes, clubs and axes and missiles of various kinds.

9. These weapons struggled with and justled against one another. They split the vault of heaven with their clattering, and cracked like loud thunder claps cleaving the mountain cliffs.

10. The arrows pierced the rods and swords, and the swords hewed down the axes and lances to pieces. The malls and mallets drove the missiles, and the pikes broke the spears (saktis).

11. The mallets like Mandara rocks, broke and drove away the rushing arrows as waves of the sea, and the resistless swords broke to pieces by striking at the maces.

12. The lances revolved like the halo of the moon, repelling the black sword-blades as darkness, and the swift missiles flashed as the destructive fires of Yama.

13. The whirling disks were destroying all other weapons; they stunned the world by their noise, and broke the mountains by their strokes.

14. The clashing weapons were breaking one another in numbers, and Vidúratha defeated the arms of Sindhu, as the steadfast mountain defies the thunders of Indra.

15. The truncheons (Sankus) were blowing away the falchions (asis); and the spontoons (súlas) were warding off the stones of the slings. The crow bars (bhusundis) broke down the pointed heads of the pikes (bhindhipálas).

16. The iron rods of the enemy (parasúlas) were broken by tridents (trisúlas) of Siva, and the hostile arms were falling down by their crushing one another to pieces.

17. The clattering shots stopped the course of the heavenly stream, and the combustion of powder filled the air with smoke.

18. The clashing of dashing weapons lightened the sky like lightnings, their clattering cracked the worlds like thunderclaps, and their shock split and broke the mountains like thunderbolts.

19. Thus were the warring weapons breaking one another by their concussion, and protracting the engagement by their mutual overthrow.

20. As Sindhu was standing still in defiance of the prowess of his adversary, Vidúratha lifted his own fire-arm, and fired it with a thundering sound.

21. It set the war chariot of Sindhu on fire like a heap of hay on the plain, while the Vaishnava weapons filled the etherial sphere with their meteoric blaze.

22. The two Kings were thus engaged in fierce fighting with each other, the one darting his weapons like drops of raging rain, and the other hurling his arms like currents of a deluging river.

23. The two Kings were thus harassing each other like two brave champions in their contest, when the chariot of Sindhu was reduced to ashes by its flame.

24. He then fled to the woods like a lion from its cavern in the mountain, and repelled the fire that pursued him by his aqueous weapons.

25. After losing his car and alighting on the ground, he brandished his sword and cut off the hoofs and heels of the horses of his enemy’s chariot in the twinkling of an eye.

26. He hacked every thing that came before him like the lean stalks of lotuses; when Vidúratha also left his chariot with his _asi_ (ensis) in hand.

27. Both equally brave and compeers to one another in their skill in warfare, turned about in their rounds, and scraped their swords into saws by mutual strokes on one another.

28. With their denticulated weapons, they tore the bodies of their enemies like fishes crushed under the teeth, when Vidúratha dropt down his broken sword, and darted his javelin against his adversary.