Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 1

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

Page 316

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wishing to cross the ocean of debt of favor from the two sons of Rṣabha. They worshipped their respective weaponssword, bow, quiver, club, spear, etc., like divinities. In front of the weapons the warriors played loud musical instruments, as if to supply the time for the heart dancing with eagerness. The warriors anoint themselves with new sandal-unguent, fragrant like their own spotless glory. The soldiers put decorations of musk on their foreheads, which resembled a military fillet of dark cloth put on. Sleep, as if terrified, did not come to the two armies of heroes, watching their weapons and making conversation about future fighting. For the heroes of the two armies, desiring to fight at dawn, the three watches of the night passed as slowly as a hundred. Then the sun mounted the peak of the eastern mountain, as if to see the eagerness of the two sons of Rṣabha for the sport of battle. The loud sounds of the battle-drums of both armies arose, like the sound of the waters of the ocean when it was stirred by Mandara as a churning-stick, like that of Puskaravarta clouds arising at the end of the world, like that of the mountains struck by the thunderbolt.
Then the elephants of the quarters, the flaps of their ears pricked up, trembled; the oceans were agitated by the sea-monsters wandering in fear; animals, though cruel, entered caves on all sides; great serpents disappeared from hole into hole; mountains trembled, their peaks falling down into big rocks; even the king of tortoises was terrified, contracting his feet and neck; the sky fell entirely to pieces, as it were; the earth burst, as it were, from the spreading noise of battle-drums.
Made to start by the war-drum, like a royal doorkeeper, the soldiers of both armies prepared for conflict. Some prepared again and again new chain armor which kept bursting from the body swelling from eagerness for battle. Some equipped their horses themselves from affection. For soldiers take better care of their animals than of themselves. Some, after equipping and mounting