Pandya (with that lance) crushed to pieces the diadem of Drona's son adorned with foremost of jewels and diamonds of the first water and the very best kind of gold and excellent cloth and strings of pearls. That diadem possessed of the splendour of the Sun, the Moon, the planets, or the fire, in consequence of the violence of the stroke, fell down, split into fragments, like a mountain summit riven by Indra's thunder, falling down on the Earth with great noise. At this, Ashvatthama blazed up with exceeding rage like a prince of snakes struck with the foot, and took up four and ten shafts capable of inflicting great pain upon foes and each resembling the Destroyer's rod. With five of those shafts he cut off the four feet and the trunk of his adversary's elephant, and with three the two arms and the head of the king, and with six he slew the six mighty car-warriors, endued with great effulgence, that followed king Pandya. Those long and well-rounded arms of the king, smeared with excellent sandal-paste, and adorned with gold and pearls and gems and diamonds falling upon the Earth, began to writhe like a couple of snakes slain by Garuda. That head also, graced with a face bright as the full Moon, having a prominent nose and a pair of large eyes, red as copper with rage, adorned with earrings, falling on the ground, looked resplendent like the Moon himself between two bright constellations. The elephant, thus cut off by that skilful warrior into six pieces with those five shafts and the king into four pieces with those three shafts lay divided in all into ten pieces that looked like the sacrificial butter distributed into ten portions intended for the ten deities. Having cut off numerous steeds and men and elephants into pieces and offered them as food into the Rakshasas, king Pandya was thus quieted by Drona's son with his shafts like a blazing fire in a crematorium, extinguished with water after it has received a libation in the shape of a lifeless body.Mbh 8.20.2e · Mahabharata · Karna-parva
Mbh 8.20.2e
Mahabharata · translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
Themes in this passage
LeadershipNatureAngerChildrenWealthKarmaStrengthWar
Leadership in other traditions
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