Shloka 51
Droṇa-parva Adhyāya 95 — Sātyaki’s Breakthrough and the Routing of Allied Contingents
छिन्नाडुलीक्षुद्रमत्स्यां युगान्ते कालसंनिभाम् । प्राकरोद् गजसम्बाधां नदीमुत्तरशोणिताम्
chinnāḍulīkṣudramatsyāṃ yugānte kālasaṃnibhām | prākarod gajasambādhāṃ nadīm uttarashoṇitām ||
Sañjaya said: “He turned the battlefield into a river—choked with elephants, running northward with blood—its waters filled with severed limbs and small fish, and dark as Kāla, Time itself, at the end of an age.”
संजय उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse frames war’s carnage against the vast scale of Kāla (Time/Death): human power and pride collapse into impermanence, and violence is shown as a force that mimics cosmic dissolution—an ethical warning about the dehumanizing momentum of battle.
Sañjaya describes the scene of slaughter in vivid metaphor: the battlefield appears like a river, clogged with elephants and flowing with blood, strewn with severed limbs and teeming with small fish—dark and dreadful like Time at the end of the age.