31. Each confronted the other with his arms, and having met one another face to face, commenced showering forth his arrows with the pattering sound of hailstones.
32. They both threatened one another with the roaring of loud surges and clouds, and the two lions among men, darted their arrows upon one another in their rage.
33. They flung their missiles in the air in the form of stones and malls, and some faced like swords, and others headed as mallets.
34. Some were as sharp edged disks, and some as curved as battle axes; some were as pointed as pikes and spears, and others as bars and rods in their forms, and some were of the shape of tridents, and others as bulky as blocks of stones.
35. These missives were falling as fully and as fast as blocks of stones, which are hurled down from high and huge rocks, by gusts of blustering hurricanes. And the meeting of the two armigerent powers, was as the confluence of the Indus and the sea, with tremendous roaring, and mutual collision and clashing.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Description of Daivástras or Supernatural Weapons.[23]
Vasishtha said:—Rájá Vidúratha, finding the high shouldered Sindhu-rája before him, was enraged like the raging sun, in his mid-day fury.
2. The twanging of his bow resounded in the air on all sides, and growled as loudly as the howling of winds in the caverns of mountains.
3. He drew his arrows from the dark quiver, and darted them like the rays of the sun rising from the womb of night.
4. Each arrow flung from the bowstring, flew as thousands in the air, and fell as millions on the ground. (The arrow or bána is a name given to bombs which burst out into unnumbered shells).