Mahabharata Bhishma Parva Chapter 94:3

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Mahabharata Bhishma Parva (Bhagavat-Gita Parva) Chapter 94:3


Covered with blood in consequence of their wounds and decked with standards (on their backs), elephants were entangled with elephants and looked like masses of clouds charged with lightning. And some amongst them mounted (by others) with the points of their tusks, and some with their frontal globes split with lances, ran hither and thither with loud shrieks like masses of roaring clouds. And some amongst them with their trunks lopped off,[1] and others with mangled limbs, dropped down in that dreadful battle like mountains shorn of their wings.[2] Other huge elephants, copiously shedding blood from their flanks, ripped open by compeers, looked like mountains with (liquified) red chalk running down their sides (after a shower).[3] Others, slain with shafts or pierced with lances and deprived of their riders, looked like mountains deprived of their crests.[4] Some amongst them, possessed by wrath and blinded (with fury) in consequence of the juice (trickling down their temples and cheeks)[5] and no longer restrained with the hook, crushed cars and steeds and foot-soldiers in that battle by hundreds. And so steeds, attacked by horsemen with bearded darts and lances, rushed against their assailants, as if agitating the points of the compass. Car-warriors of noble parentage and prepared to lay down their lives, encountering car-warriors, fought fearlessly, relying upon their utmost might. The combatants, O king, seeking glory or heaven, struck one another in that awful press, as if in a marriage by self-choice. During however, that dreadful battle making the hair stand on end, the Dhartarashtra troops generally were made to run their backs on the field.

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References

  1. Literally, 'divided in twain'
  2. Mountains, in Hindu mythology, had wings, till they were shorn of these by Indra with his thunder. Only Mainaka, the son of Himavat, saved himself by a timely flight. To this day he conceals himself within the ocean.
  3. The Bengal reading of the first line of this verse is vicious. The true reading is parswaistudaritairanye. Both parsa and darita should be (as here) in the instrumental plural, and anye should be in the nom. plural.
  4. The correct reading, as settled by the Burdwan Pundits, is Hataroha vyodrisyanta. Some texts have Hayaroha which is incorrect.
  5. Blinded cheeks." The Sanskrit word is madandha. Literally rendered, it would be "juice-blind". This can scarcely be intelligible to the general European reader. Hence the long-winded adjectival clause I have used