many heroes, covered with blood, deprived of their senses, and in great agony, laid themselves down, calling upon their friends and kinsmen.  Arms, bearing short arrows, or lances, or darts, or swords, or battle-axes, or pointed stakes, or scimitars, or bows, or spears, or shafts, or maces, and cased in armour and decked with Angadas and other ornaments, and looking like large snakes, and resembling huge clubs, cut off (from trunks) with mighty weapons, were seen to jump about, jerk about, and move about, with great force, as if in rage.  Every one amongst those that wrathfully advanced against Partha in that battle, perished, pierced in his body with some fatal shafts of that hero.  While dancing on his car as it moved, and drawing his bow, no one there could detect the minutest opportunity for striking him.  The quickness with which he took his shafts, fixed them on the bow, and let them off, filled all his enemies with wonder.  Indeed Phalguna, with his shafts, pierced elephants and elephant-riders, horses and horse-riders, car-warriors and drivers of cars.  There was none amongst his enemies, whether staying before him or struggling in battle, or wheeling about, whom the son of Pandu did not slay.  As the sun rising in the welkin destroyeth the thick gloom, even so did Arjuna destroy that elephant-force by means of his shafts winged with Kanka plumes.  The field occupied by thy troops, in consequence of riven elephants fallen upon it, looked like the earth strewn with huge hills at the hour of universal dissolution.  As the midday sun is incapable of being looked at by all creatures, even so was Dhananjaya, excited with wrath, incapable of being looked at, in battle, by his enemies.  The troops of thy son, O chastiser of foes, afflicted (with the arrows of Dhananjaya), broke and fled in fear.  Like a mass of clouds pierced and driven away by a mighty wind, that army was pierced and routed by Partha.  None indeed could gaze at the hero while he was slaying the foe.  Urging their heroes to great speed by spurs, by the horns of their bows, by deep growls, by encouraging behests, by whips, by cuts on their flanks, and by threatening speeches, thy men, viz., thy cavalry and thy car-warriors, as also thy foot-soldiers, struck by the shafts of Arjuna, fled away from the fields.  Others (that rode on elephants), fled away, urging those huge beasts by pressing their flanks with their hooks and many warriors struck by Partha’s arrows, in flying, ran against Partha himself.  Indeed, thy warriors, then became all cheerless and their understandings were all confused.

SECTION LXXXIX

“Dhritarashtra said, ’When the van of my army thus slaughtered by the diadem-decked (Arjuna) broke and fled, who were those heroes that advanced against Arjuna? (Did any of them actually fight with Arjuna, or) did all, abandoning their determination enter the Sakata array, getting behind the fearless Drona, resembling a solid wall?’