The description of the field of battle

Sanjaya said Thus having slain one of their best warriors and having been afflicted with their shafts and covered with blood, we returned to our quarters in the evening.

Gazed at by the foe and nearly senseless and overpowered with fatigue, we then, O mighty monarch, slowly left the field of battle.

Then approached that wonderful hour, that joining between the day and the night, harbingered by the inauspicious yells of the jackals; and the sun then assuming the pale-red tint of the lotus-filaments, went down below the horizon, having neared the western hills.

Then the sun robbed the radiance of our excellent swords, lances, scimitars, car-fences, shields and ornaments; and causing the sky and the earth to assume the self-same hue, he then betook to his favourite shape of fire.

The earth was then covered over with motionless carcasses of myriads of elephants, all lifeless, resembling the peaks of cloud-clapt hills cleft open by the bolt of Heaven and with their banners and goads scattered about and their guides dislodged from their backs.

The field of battle appeared beautiful with huge chariots splintered into pieces and with their warriors, drivers ornaments, steeds, standards streamers crushed, shattered and torn to pieces. Those cars then, o monarch, resembled animate beings deprived of their vital breaths by the enemy with his arrows.

Then the earth assumed a dreadful and repulsive aspect, being strewn over with numerous horses and their riders all lying dead, with precious housings and blankets of various kind scattered about and in consequence of the tongues, teeth, entrails and eyes of those creatures being drawn out of their places.

Men adorned with precious armours ornaments and garments and weapons, deprived of life, lay prostrate on the field with slain horses and elephants and shattered chariots, on the naked earth, totally helpless, although quite deserving of precious blankets and beds.

Greatly delighted dogs, jackals and crows and numerous other flesh-eating birds and wolves and hyenas and ravens and other blooddrinking animals animals and various clans of Rakshasas and large bodies of Pisachas, repairing to the field of battle.

Tore open the corpses and drank their fat marrow and blood and then fell upon eating their flesh. They began also to drink the secretions of rotten corpses, while some of the Rakshasa laughed terribly and dragged out dead bodies by thousands.

An awful river like the Vaitarani itself difficult of being tided over, was created there by many best of car-warriors. Its waters were formed by the blood of slain creatures. Chariots formed the rafts on which to cross it; elephants constituted its rocks and the heads of men formed its pebbles. It was muddy with the flesh of slain elephants, men and horses. Various kinds of weapons constituted the garlands floating on it. That dreadful current of blood flowed through the middle of the field of battle carrying with it living being to the doleful abodes of Death.

Drinking and eating in that stream numerous Pisachas of terrible and repulsive aspect rejoiced. Dogs and jackals and flesh eating birds, all partaking of the same food and striking terror into the hearts of the living creatures held a great feast (on its banks).

Then at the advent of night, looking upon that fierce field of battle that had increased largely the population of Deaths regions and that was infested with dancing headless trunks of soldiers, they slowly went away from it.

Then as they left if, they saw the mighty car-warrior Abhimanyu, who resembled Indra himself, lying on the field of battle, with precious ornaments displaced and falling off and appearing like a sacrificial fire on the alter no longer fed by oblations of clarified butter.