of whom were cheerful and filled with rage and inspired with certain hopes of victory.  Like a mountain, striking against a mountain, or an ocean against an ocean, O monarch, was that collision between the Kurus and the Pandavas.  Filled with joy, the Kuru and the Pandava warriors beat thousands of drums.  The loud and stunning uproar that arose from among those troops resembled that of the ocean itself while churned (of old by the gods and the Danavas).  Then Drona’s son, aiming at the host of the Pandavas and the Panchalas, invoked the weapon called Narayana.  Then thousands of arrows with blazing mouths appeared in the welkin, resembling snakes of fiery mouths, that continued to agitate the Pandavas.  In that dreadful battle, those shafts, O king, like the very rays of the sun in a moment shrouded all the points of the compass, the welkin, and the troops.  Innumerable iron balls also, O king, then appeared, like resplendent luminaries in the clear firmament.  Sataghnis, some equipped with four and some with two wheels, and innumerable maces, and discs, with edges sharp as razor and resplendent like the sun, also appeared there.  Beholding the welkin densely shrouded with those weapons, O bull of Bharata’s race, the Pandavas, the Panchalas, and the Srinjayas, became exceedingly agitated.  In all those places, O ruler of men, where the great car-warriors of the Pandavas contended in battle, that weapon became exceedingly powerful.  Slaughtered by the Narayana weapon, as if consumed by a conflagration, the Pandava troops were exceedingly afflicted all over the field in that battle.  Indeed, O lord, as fire consumeth a heap of dry grass in summer, even so did that weapon consume the army of the Pandus.  Beholding that weapon filling every side, seeing his own troops destroyed in large numbers, king Yudhishthira the just, O lord, became inspired with great fright.  Seeing his army in course of flight and deprived of its senses, and beholding Parthas standing indifferent, Dharma’s son said these words, ’O Dhrishtadyumna, fly away with your Panchala troops.  O Satyaki, you also go away, surrounded by the Vrishnis and the Andhakas.  Of virtuous soul, Vasudeva will himself seek the means of his own safety.  He is competent to offer advice to the whole world.  What need is there of telling him what he should do?  We should not any longer fight.  I say so unto all the troops.  As regards myself, I will, with all my brothers ascend a funeral pile.  Having crossed the Bhishma and the Drona oceans in this battle, that are incapable of being crossed by the timid, shall I sink with all my followers in the vestige, represented by Drona’s son, of a cow’s hoof?  Let the wishes of king Duryodhana be crowned with success today, for I have today slain in battle the preceptor, that always cherished such friendly feelings towards us, that preceptor, who, without protecting, caused that child unacquainted with battle, viz., the son of Subhadra, to be slain by a multitude of wicked warriors, that preceptor,