like (the asura) Andhaka fighting with the three-eyed deity." Thus addressed, Pandya answered, "So be it." Then Drona's son, telling him "Strike," assailed him with vigour. In return, Malayadhwaja pierced the son of Drona with a barbed arrow. Then Drona's son, that best of preceptors, smiling the while, struck Pandya with some fierce arrows, capable of penetrating into the very vitals and resembling flames of fire. Then Ashvatthama once more sped at his foe some other large arrows equipped with keen points and capable of piercing the very vitals, causing them to course through the welkin with the ten different kinds of motion. Pandya, however, with nine shafts of his cut off all those arrows of his antagonist. With four other shafts he afflicted the four steeds of his foe, at which they speedily expired. Having then, with his sharp shafts, cut off the arrows of Drona's son, Pandya then cut off the stretched bow-string of Ashvatthama, endued with the splendour of the sun. Then Drona's son, that slayer of foes, stringing his unstringed bow, and seeing that his men had meanwhile speedily yoked other excellent steeds unto his car, sped thousands of arrows (at his foe). By this, that regenerate one filled the entire welkin and the ten points of the compass with his arrows. Although knowing that those shafts of the high-souled son of Drona employed in shooting were really inexhaustible, yet Pandya, that bull among men, cut them all into pieces. The antagonist of Ashvatthama, carefully cutting off all those shafts shot by the latter, then slew with his own keen shafts the two protectors of the latter's car wheels in that encounter. Beholding the lightness of hand displayed by his foe, Drona's son, drawing his bow to a circle, began to shoot his arrows like a mass of clouds pouring torrents of rain. During that space of time, O sire, which consisted only of the eighth part of a day, the son of Drona shot as many arrows as were carried on eight carts each drawn by eight bullocks. Almost all those men that then beheld Ashvatthama, who at the time looked like the Destroyer himself filled with rage, or rather the Destroyer of the Destroyer, lost their senses. Like a mass of clouds at the close of summer drenching with torrents of rain, the Earth with her mountains and trees, the preceptor's son poured on that hostile force his arrowy shower. Baffling with the Vayavya weapon that unbearable shower of arrows shot by the Ashvatthama-cloud, the Pandya-wind, filled with joy, uttered loud roars. Then Drona's son cutting off the standard, smeared with sandal-paste and other perfumed unguents and bearing the device of the Malaya mountain on it, of the roaring Pandya, slew the four steeds of the latter. Slaying then his foe's driver with a single shaft, and cutting off with a crescent-shaped arrow the bow also of that warrior whose twang resembled the roar of the clouds, Ashvatthama cut off his enemy's car into minute fragments.