instruments, seemed to dance and laugh. In the midst of that vast force,
came Vrikodara, riding on the neck of an elephant, and surrounded by many
foremost of elephant-soldiers, advancing against thy army. That fierce
and foremost of elephants, duly equipped, looked resplendent, like the
stone-built mansion on the top of the Udaya mountain, crowned with the
risen Sun. Its armour of iron, the foremost of its kind, studded with
costly gems, was as resplendent as the autumnal firmament bespangled with
stars. With a lance in his outstretched arm, his head decked with a
beautiful diadem, and possessed of the splendour of the meridian Sun at
autumn, Bhima began to burn his foes. Beholding that elephant from a
distance, Kshemadhurti, himself on an elephant, challenging, rushed
cheerfully towards Bhima who was more cheerful still. An encounter then
took place between those two elephants of fierce forms resembling two
huge hills topped with trees, each, fighting with the other as it liked.
Those two heroes, then, whose elephants thus encountered each other,
forcibly struck each other with lances endued with the splendour of solar
rays, and uttered loud roars. Separating, they then careered in circles
with their elephants, and each taking up a bow began to strike the other.
Gladdening the people around with their loud roars and the slaps on their
armpits and the whizz of this arrows, they continued to utter leonine
shouts. Endued with great strength, both of them, accomplished in
weapons, fought, using their elephants with upturned trunks and decked
with banners floating on the wind. Then each cutting off the other's bow,
they roared at each other, and rained on each other showers of darts and
lances like two masses of clouds in the rainy season pouring torrents of
rain. Then Kshemadhurti pierced Bhimasena in the centre of the chest with
a lance endued with great impetuosity, and then with six others, and
uttered a loud shout. With those lances sticking to his body, Bhimasena,
whose form then blazed with wrath, looked resplendent like the
cloud-covered Sun with his rays issuing through the interstices of that