38. These with their gigantic bodies rose as high as mountains, and seemed as hellish fiends appearing from the infernal regions in their ghostly forms.
39. The ferocious body of the roaring Rákshasas, terrified both the gods and demigods (surásuras), by their loud martial music and war dance of their headless trunks (Kavandhas).
40. The giddy Vetálas, Yakshas and Kushmándas, devoured the fat and flesh of dead bodies as their toast, and drank the gory blood as their lurid wines in the coarse of their war dance.
41. The hopping and jumping of the Kushmándas, in their war dance in streams of blood, scattered its crimson particles in the air, which assembled in the form of a bridge of red evening clouds over the sparkling sea.
CHAPTER L.
Death of Vidúratha.
Vasishtha said:—As the tide of war was rolling violently with a general massacre on both sides, the belligerent monarchs thought on the means of saving their own forces from the impending ruin.
2. The magnanimous Sindhurája, who was armed with patience, called to his mind the Vaishnava weapon, which was the greatest of arms and as powerful as Siva (Jove) himself.
3. No sooner was the Vaishnava weapon hurled by him with his best judgment (mantra), than it emitted a thousand sparks of fire from its flaming blade on all sides.
4. These sparks enlarged into balls, as big and bright as to shine like hundreds of suns in the sky, and others flew as the lengthy shafts of cudgels in the air.
5. Some of them filled the wide field of the firmament with thunderbolts as thick as the blades of grass, and others overspread the lake of heaven, with battle axes as a bed of lotuses.