‘We are the four priests, and the blessed Hari himself directs the rite; the king has consecrated himself for the sacrament of battle, the queen has taken on herself the vow; the Kauravyas are the victims, the end to be achieved the extinction of our loved one’s bitterness of shame at the insult done her; loudly the drum of fame summons the warrior to the fray.’ Equally effective is his summing up of his feat: [448] bhūmau kṣiptaṁ çarīraṁ nihitam idam asṛk candanam Bhīmagātre lakṣmīr ārye niṣaṇṇā caturudadhipayaḥsīmayā sārdham urvyā bhṛtyā mitrāṇi yodhāḥ Kurukulam akhilaṁ dagdham etadraṇāgnau nāmaikaṁ yad bravīṣi kṣitipa tad adhunā Dhārtarāṣṭrasya çeṣam. ‘His body is cast upon the ground; his blood is smeared as sandal paste on Bhīma’s limbs; the goddess of fortune, with the earth bounded by the waters of the four oceans, rests on my noble brother’s lap; servants, friends, warriors, the whole house of the Kurus has been burned in this fire of battle; the name alone, O king, is left of Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s race.’ Effective is the appeal which Dhṛtarāṣṭra bids the faithful Sañjaya address to the righteously indignant Açvatthāman: [449] smarati na bhavān pītaṁ stanyaṁ cirāya sahāmunā mama ca malinaṁ kṣaumam bālye tvadan̄gavivartanaiḥ anujanidhanasphītāc chokād atipraṇayāc ca tad— vikṛtavacane māsmin krodhaç ciraṁ kriyatāṁ tvayā. ‘Forget not the milk which thou didst so long drink from the same breast with him; forget not my robe that thy childish feet so often soiled in play; his grief is bitter for the death of the younger brother whom he loved so dearly; be not, therefore, wroth for the unjust words he hath spoken to thee.’ On the other hand, we find in Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa many of the defects of Bhavabhūti, in special the fondness for long compounds both in Prākrit and in Sanskrit prose [450] and the same straining after effect which gives such a description of the battle as that vouchsafed to Draupadī by Bhīma, when she warns him nor to be overrash in battle: [451] anyonyāsphālabhinnadviparudhiravasāmāṅsamastiṣkapan̄ke magnānāṁ syandanānām upari kṛtapadanyāsavikrāntapattau sphītāsṛkpānagoṣṭhīrasadaçivaçivātūryanṛtyatkabandhe samgrāmaikārṇavāntaḥpayasi vicaritum paṇḍitāḥ Pāṇḍuputrāḥ. ‘The sons of Pāṇḍu are well skilled to disport in the waters of the ocean of the battle, wherein dance headless corpses to the music of the unholy jackals, that yell in joy as they drink the thick blood of the dead, and the footmen in their valour leap over the chariots that are sunk in the mud of the blood, fat, flesh, and brains of the elephants shattered in mutual onslaught.’ The adaptation of sound to sense here is doubtless admirable, and the picture drawn is vivid in a painful degree, but the style is too laboured to be attractive to modern taste.