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Mahabharata Vana Parva Chapter 243
Vaisampayana said, "Then those Gandharvas decked in golden garlands and accomplished in celestial weapons, showing their blazing shafts, encountered the Pandavas from every side. And as the sons of Pandu were only four in number and the Gandharvas counted by thousands, the battle that ensued appeared to be extraordinary. And as the cars of Karna and Duryodhana had formerly been broken into a hundred fragments by the Gandharvas, so were the cars of the four heroes attempted to be broken. But those tigers among men began to encounter with their showers of arrows thousands upon thousands of Gandharvas rushing towards them. Those rangers of skies endued with great energy, thus checked on all sides by that arrowy down-pour, succeeded not in even coming near to the sons of Pandu. Then Arjuna whose ire had been provoked, aiming at the angry Gandharvas, prepared to hurl against them his celestial weapons. And in that encounter, the mighty Arjuna, by means of his Agneya weapon, sent ten hundreds of thousands of Gandharvas to the abode of Yama. And that mighty bowman, Bhima, also, that foremost of all warriors in battle, slew, by means of his sharp arrows, Gandharvas by hundreds. And the mighty sons of Madri also, battling with vigour, encountered hundreds of Gandharvas, O king, and slaughtered them all. And as Gandharvas were being thus slaughtered by the mighty warriors with their celestial weapons, they rose up to the skies, taking with them the sons of Dhritarashtra. But Dhananjaya, the son of Kunti, beholding them rise up to the skies, surrounded them on every side by a wide net of arrows. And confined within that arrowy net like birds within a cage, they showered in wrath upon Arjuna maces and darts and broad-swords. But Arjuna who was conversant with the most efficacious weapons, soon checked that shower of maces and darts and broad-swords, and in return began to mangle the limbs of the Gandharvas with his crescent-shaped arrows. And heads and legs and arms began to drop down from above resembling a shower of stones. And at that sight, the foe was struck with panic. And as the Gandharvas were being slaughtered by the illustrious son of Pandu, they began to shower from the skies a heavy downpour of shafts upon Arjuna, who was on the surface of the earth. But that chastiser of foes, Arjuna, endued with mighty energy checked that shower of arrows by means of his own weapons and began, in return, to wound them.
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