f
car-wheels, foes rushed upon foes. Gladdened by that loud noise, heroes,
fought with heroes desirous of reaching the end of the hostilities. Loud
became the noise caused by the sound of bow-strings and fences and bows,
the grunt of elephants, and the shouts of foot-soldiers and falling men.
Hearing the terrible whizz of arrows and the diverse shouts of brave
warriors, the troops took fright, became pale, and fell down. Large
numbers of those foes thus employed in shouting and shooting weapons, the
heroic son of Adhiratha crushed with his arrows. With his shafts Karna
then despatched to Yama's abode twenty car-warriors among the brave
Pancala heroes, with their steeds, drivers, and standards. Then many
foremost of warriors of the Pandava army, endued with great energy and
quick in the use of weapons, speedily wheeling round, encompassed Karna
on all sides. Karna agitated that hostile force with showers of weapons
like the leader of an elephantine herd plunging into a lake adorned with
lotuses and covered with swans. Penetrating into the midst of his foes,
the son of Radha, shaking his best of bows, began to strike off and fell
their heads with his sharp shafts. The shield and coats of mail of the
warriors, cut off, fell down on the Earth. There was none amongst them
that needed the touch of a second arrow of Karna's. Like a driver
striking the steeds with the whip, Karna, with his shafts capable of
crushing coats of mail and bodies and the life that quickened them,
struck the fences (of his foes) perceivable only by their bow-strings.
Like a lion grinding herds of deer, Karna speedily grinded all those
Pandus and Srinjayas and Pancalas that came within range of his arrows.
Then the chief of the Pancalas, and the sons of Draupadi, O sire, and the
twins, and Yuyudhana, uniting together, proceeded against Karna. When
those Kurus, and Pancalas and Pandus were thus engaged in battle, the
other warriors, reckless of their very lives, began to strike at one
another. Well-cased in armour and coats of mail and adorned with
head-gears, combatants endued with great strength rushed at their foes,
with maces and short clubs and spiked bludgeons looking like uplifted
rods of the Destroyer, and jumping, O sire, and challenging one another,
uttered loud shouts. They struck one another, and fell down, assailed by
one another with blood rising from their limbs and deprived of brains and
eyes and weapons. Covered with weapons, some, as the