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CHAPTER FOUR
The best elephants, urged by their drivers, retreating and advancing, fought with a four-tusk fight. In one bucket a lance, in the other a hammer, carrying swords in their hands, the cavalry hurried their horses. The chariots came together, like the separate banks of the Sindhu, deafening the world by a terrible noise. The infantry, powerful heroes, made their shields clash, striking against each other, and fought sword against sword. Instantly Vişņu's army was broken by Madhu's, like a tree-trunk by a cruel calamitous wind. Then the charioteer Hari, accompanied by the charioteer Balabhadra, blew Pāñcajanya like an unfavorable portent for enemies. At Pañcajanya's sound, some of Madhu's soldiers trembled, some were dazed, and others fell to the ground.
When he saw his army thus distracted, Madhu himself, twanging his bow, challenged Purusottama clearly. Speedily stringing his bow, Śarngin made it sound, which made heaven and earth sound, as it were, by the very loud echo. Repeatedly drawing sharp arrows from the quiver, like snake-charmers drawing snakes, they hurled them at each other to kill. Skilled in the art of destruction, they both destroyed each other's arrows, like the life of the Lakṣmi of victory, with arrows. In the same way other missiles were cut by other missiles mutually, like cutting a string. For such is a battle of persons equally strong. Angered by their mutual equality, wishing to show a difference, Madhu thought of his cakra and it fell into his hand. Though wishing to kill, Madhu said with trembling lips, "Go! Go, Sir! Do you from ignorance wish to look at the teeth of a tigress? What credit, pray, would it to be to my power for you, a boy, to be destroyed? Is there any embellishment of the power of a choice elephant in rooting up a plantain tree? I, considering myself a distinguished soldier, am older than you. You are very small compared with me, like an elephant, though a large one, compared with a mountain."
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