Shloka 29
Nakula’s Engagement with Citra-sena and Karṇa’s Sons; Śalya Re-stabilizes the Kaurava Host
संजज्ञे रणभूमौ तु परलोकवहा नदी । शोणितोदा रथावर्ता ध्वजवृक्षास्थिशर्करा
sañjajñe raṇabhūmau tu paralokavahā nadī | śoṇitodā rathāvartā dhvajavṛkṣāsthiśarkarā ||
Sañjaya said: On that battlefield there arose a river that carried beings toward the world beyond. Its water was blood; chariots formed its whirlpools; banners stood like trees upon its banks; and bones lay like gravel and stones—an ominous vision of war as a current sweeping the fallen toward death and the afterlife.
संजय उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse uses a stark metaphor—war as a river of blood flowing to the afterlife—to underline the moral weight and irreversible consequences of violence: battle does not merely decide victory, it carries lives away, reminding listeners of impermanence and the grave cost that dharma must reckon with.
Sañjaya, narrating the Kurukṣetra war, depicts the battlefield as if a dreadful river has formed there: blood is its water, chariots its whirlpools, banners its trees, and bones its pebbles—an intensified poetic description of the carnage and the mass death occurring in the fighting.