Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 1

Author(s): Hemchandracharya, Helen M Johnson
Publisher: Oriental Research Institute Vadodra

Page 260

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horn curved like frowns of Yama angered; some drew from the scabbard terrible one-edged swords, hard to restrain in battle, like pleasure-couches of the Sri of victory. Some, like younger brothers of Yama, took up - staves; some made lances dance in the sky like comets. Some carried spears as if to impale enemies from friendship for Yama invited to the battle-festival. Others took in their hands iron arrows like hawks, robbers of the wealth of life of the circles of quails of the enemy. Some took at once hammers with a firm grasp as if wishing to knock down a multitude of stars from the sky. Others, desiring battle, took various weapons. No one was without a weapon, just as no serpent is without poison.
Then they ran forward at the same time as one person toward the army of Bharata, eager for the rasa belonging to an army (heroism). The Mlecchas fought ardently with the van of Bharata's army, raining weapons like inauspicious clouds hail-stones. Weapons sprang up, as if from the middle of the earth; flew, as if from the quarters of the sky; fell, as if from the air, frem them on all sides. There was no part of the van of Bharata's army that was not divided by the arrows of the Kirātas as if by words of rogues. The advance cavalry of the Lord of Bharata, turned back by the army of Mlecchas, trembled like the waves at the mouth of a river turned back by the waves of the ocean. The Cakrin's elephants were terrified, crying out with a disagreeable noise, as the lions of Mlecchas attacked them with sharp nails of arrows. The King's infantry fell, rolling like balls, struck repeatedly by the Mleccha-soldiers with their cruel staff-weapons. The chariots in the van of the king's army were divided by the Mleccha-army at will by blows with clubs, like mountains by blows with the thunderbolt.
The general, Suşeņa, seeing the army defeated as if it had no general, was impelled by anger like a command of the king. Instantly his eyes became red, his face red, hard to look at like Agni himself in the form of a man.