It would be too tedious to recount the innumerable combats which the author describes, or to follow the varying fortunes of the field, as victory inclines now to one side, now to the other. It would be cruel work, to dwell upon the prodigious slaughter of the rank and file which occurred each day, or to picture the vast plain covered with the mangled corpses of men, horses and elephants. Nor would it be either profitable or pleasant to wander over the ground encumbered with shattered chariots, broken standards and abandoned weapons of every kind, amidst which pitiful wreck flowed great sluggish streams of crimson blood. Somehow the sickening horror of the terrible scenes of carnage which the epic bards have conjured up does not seem to have struck them, for when they remark upon the appearance of the field--strewn with mangled corpses and broken armour, with banners and weapons all reeking with blood--it is usually with admiration of its _beauty_, unmingled with any feeling of aversion or regret. In their eyes the scene of death and ruin, with its gory trophies, “shines as if with floral wreaths,” or “looks beautiful like the firmament in autumn,” or “like a damsel adorned with different kinds of ornaments.” In the gloom of night, however, the Hindu poets realize, with superstitious awe, the abhorrent nature of the dreadful battle-field, “abounding as it did with spirits and with jackals howling piteously.” How the multitudinous dead and the wreckage which littered the field were disposed of we do not learn, but the opposing parties retired each day at sunset to their respective camps and renewed the battle with the dawn of next day. However, occasional allusions to hungry dogs and vultures, howling jackals, stealthy hyenas and fierce cannibals give a dark, if not very intelligible, hint of the fate of the unburied dead. The death of Bhisma is the prominent and crowning event of the battles which raged with unabated fury for the first ten days of the war. The old hero performed prodigies of valour, and many a time proved himself more than a match for his brave opponents, slaughtering no less than “a hundred million of warriors in ten days.”[102] Such huge work, it must be admitted, required great celerity of action, and we learn, accordingly, that in one battle Bhisma “felled the heads of car-warriors like a skilful man felling (with stones) ripe (palmyra) fruits from trees that bear them. And the heads of warriors falling upon the surface of the earth produced a loud noise resembling that of a stony shower.”[103] His success against the Pandavas aroused the anger of Krishna, who had not escaped unwounded in these hotly contested fights, and, jumping off the car he was driving, he rushed impetuously forward to slay the son of Ganga, “and the end of his yellow garments waving in the air looked like a cloud charged with lightning in the sky.”