“Sanjaya continued, ’Thus addressed by Savyasaci, he of Dasarha’s race, reins in hand, fearlessly penetrated that vast hostile force for battle.  That was a terrible forest of bows (which the two heroes entered).  Darts constituted its prickles.  Maces and spiked bludgeons were its paths.  Cars and elephants were its mighty trees.  Cavalry and infantry were its creepers.  And the illustrious Keshava, as he entered that forest on that car decked with many banners and pennons, looked exceedingly resplendent.  Those white steeds, O king, bearing Arjuna in battle, were seen careering everywhere, urged by him of Dasarha’s race!  Then that scorcher of foes, Savyasaci, proceeded on his car, shooting hundreds of keen shafts like a cloud pouring showers of rain.  Loud was the noise produced by those straight arrows, as also by those combatants that were covered with them in that battle by Savyasaci.  Showers of shafts, piercing through the armour of the combatants, fell down on the Earth.  Impelled from Gandiva, arrows, whose touch resembled that of Indra’s thunder, striking men and elephants and horses, O king, fell in that battle with a noise like that of winged insects.  Everything was shrouded with those shafts shot from Gandiva.  In that battle, the points of the compass, cardinal and subsidiary, could not be distinguished.  The whole world seemed to be filled with gold-winged shafts, steeped in oil, polished by the hands of the smith, and marked with Partha’s name.  Struck with those keen shafts, and burnt therewith by Partha even as a herd of elephants is burnt with burning brands, the Kauravas became languid and lost their strength.  Armed with bow and arrows, Partha, resembling the blazing sun, burnt the hostile combatants in that battle like a blazing fire consuming a heap of dry grass.  As a roaring fire of blazing flames and great energy (arising from embers) cast away on the confines of a forest by its denizens, fire consumes those woods abounding with trees and heaps of dry creepers, even so that hero possessed of great activity and fierce energy and endued with prowess of weapons, and having shafts for his flames, quickly burnt all the troops of thy son from wrath.  His gold-winged arrows, endued with fatal force and shot with care, could not be baffled by any armour.  He had not to shoot a second arrow at man, steed, or elephant of gigantic size.  Like the thunder-wielding Indra striking down the Daityas, Arjuna, alone, entering that division of mighty car-warriors, destroyed it with shafts of diverse forms.’”

25

“Sanjaya said, ’Dhananjaya, with his Gandiva, frustrated the purpose of those unreturning heroes struggling in battle and striking their foes.  The shafts shot by Arjuna, irresistible and endued with great force and whose touch was like that of the thunder, were seen to resemble torrents of rain poured by a cloud.  That army, O chief of the Bharatas, thus struck by Kiritin, fled away in the very sight of thy son.  Some deserted their sires and brothers,