“Sanjaya said, ‘Having thus slain one of their foremost warriors, and
having been afflicted with their arrows, we came back to our encampment
in the evening, covered with blood. Steadfastly gazed at by the enemy, we
slowly left, O monarch, the field of battle, having sustained a severe
loss and nearly deprived of our senses. Then came that wonderful hour
intervening between day and night. Inauspicious howls of jackals were
heard. The sun, with the pale-red hue of the filaments of the
lotus, sank low in the horizon, having approached the western hills. And
he took away with him the splendour of our swords and darts, rapiers and
car-fences, and shields and ornaments. Causing the firmament and the
earth to assume the same hue, the sun assumed his favourite form of fire.
The field of battle was strewn with the motionless bodies of innumerable
elephants deprived of life, looking like crests of cloud-capped hills
riven by the thunder, and lying about with their standards and hooks and
riders fallen from their backs. The earth looked beautiful with large
cars crushed to pieces, and with their warriors and charioteers and
ornaments and steeds and standards and banners crushed, broken and torn.
Those huge cars, O king, looked like living creatures deprived of their
lives by the foe with his shafts. The field of battle assumed a fierce
and awful aspect in consequence of large number of steeds and riders all
lying dead, with costly trappings and blankets of diverse kinds scattered
about, and tongues and teeth and entrails and eyes of those creatures
bulging out of their places. Men decked with costly coats of mail and
ornaments and robes and weapons, deprived of life, lay with slain steeds
and elephants and broken cars, on the bare ground, perfectly helpless,
although deserving of costly beds and blankets. Dogs and jackals, and
crown and cranes and other carnivorous birds, and wolves and hyenas, and
ravens and other food-drinking creatures, all diverse tribes of
Rakshasas, and large number of Pisachas, on the field of battle, tearing
the skins of the corpse and drinking their fat, blood and marrow, began
to eat their flesh. And they began to suck also the secretions of rotten
corpses, while the Rakshasas laughed horribly and sang aloud, dragging
dead bodies numbering thousands. An awful river, difficult to cross, like
the Vaitarani itself, was caused there by foremost of warriors. Its
waters were constituted by the blood (of fallen creatures). Cars
constituted the rafts (on which to cross it), elephants formed its
rocks, and the heads of human beings, its smaller stones. And it was miry
with the flesh (of slain steeds and elephants and men). And diverse kinds
of costly weapons constituted the garlands (floating on it or lying on
its banks). And that terrible river flowed fiercely through the middle of
the field of battle, wafting living creatures to the regions of the dead.
And large numbers of Pisachas, of horrible and repulsive forms, rejoiced,
drinking and eating in that stream. And dogs and jackals and carnivorous
birds, all eating of the same food, and inspiring living creatures with
terror, held their high carnival there. And the warriors, gazing on that
field of battle which, enhancing the population of Yama’s domain,
presented such an awful sight, and where human corpses rising up, began
to dance, slowly left it as they beheld the mighty car-warrior Abhimanyu
who resembled Sakra himself, lying on the field, his costly ornaments
displaced and fallen off, and looking like a sacrificial fire on the
altar no longer drenched with clarified butter.’”