280.  The Bengal reading of this verse, which I adopt, is better than the Bombay reading.  The Bengal reading is more consistent with what follows in verse 8.  If the Bombay reading be adopted, the translation would run thus:—­“One should not fight a Kshatriya in battle unless he has put on armour.  One should fight with one, after challenging in those words—­’Shoot, for I am shooting at thee.”  K.P.  Singh’s rendering is substantially correct.  The Burdwan version, as usual, is wrong.

281.  The distress referred to here is of being unhorsed or deprived of car or of weapons, etc.

282.  The original is wry elliptical.  I, therefore, expand it after the manner of the commentator.  Regarding the last half of the second line, I do not follow Nilakantha in his interpretation.

283.  This verse also is exceedingly elliptical in the original.

284.  The sense seems to be that in fighting with the aid of deceit the enemy should not be slain outright, such slaughter being sinful.  Slaying an enemy, however, in fair fight is meritorious.

285.  This verse is not intelligible, nor does it seem to be connected with what goes before.

286.  The meaning is that king Pratardana took what is proper to be taken and hence he incurred no sin.  King Divodasa, however, by taking what he should not have taken, lost all the merit of his conquests.

287.  Nilakantha takes Mahajanam to mean the Vaisya traders that accompany all forces.  Following him, the vernacular translators take that word in the same sense.  There can belittle doubt, however, that this is erroneous.  The word means “vast multitudes.”  Why should Yudhishthira, refer to the slaughter of only the Vaisyas in the midst of troops as his reason for supposing Kshatriya practices to be sinful?  Apayana mean, “flight.”  I prefer to read Avayana meaning ‘march.’

288.  The protection of subjects is likened here to the performance of a sacrifice that has the merit of all sacrifices.  The final present in that sacrifice is the dispelling of everybody’s fear.

289. i.e., not at the weapon’s edge, but otherwise.

290.  Ajya is any liquid substance, generally of course clarified butter, that is poured upon the sacrificial fire.

291.  Sphis is the wooden stick with which lines are drawn on the sacrificial platform.

292.  The van of the hostile army is the place of his wives, for he goes thither as cheerfully as he does to such a mansion.  Agnidhras are those priests that have charge of the celestial fires.

293.  To take up a straw and hold it between the lips is an indication of unconditional surrender.