1.13 And then noise Sanjaya speaks
ततः शङ्खाश्च भेर्यश्च पणवानकगोमुखाः
सहसैवाभ्यहन्यन्त स शब्दस्तुमुलोऽभवत्
tataḥ śhaṅkhāśhcha bheryaśhcha paṇavānaka-gomukhāḥ
sahasaivābhyahanyanta sa śhabdastumulo ’bhavat
Then conches and kettledrums, cymbals, drums and horns sounded all at once, and the noise was tremendous.
Explanation
Nine verses of names, and then noise.
Conches, kettledrums, cymbals, drums and horns, all at once — and the noise was tremendous.
Modern readers tend to skim from here to Arjuna's collapse, and that is worth resisting. The sound is the last thing before the silence of 1.21, when he asks to be driven into the middle of it.
Going further
Word by word
- tataḥ
- thereafter
- śhaṅkhāḥ
- conches
- cha
- and
- bheryaḥ
- bugles
- cha
- and
- paṇava-ānaka
- drums and kettledrums
- go-mukhāḥ
- trumpets
- sahasā
- suddenly
- eva
- indeed
- abhyahanyanta
- blared forth
- saḥ
- that
- śhabdaḥ
- sound
- tumulaḥ
- overwhelming
- abhavat
- was
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Nine verses of names, and then noise.
Modern readers tend to skim the catalogue of warriors, and that is a mistake worth resisting. The list is doing something: it establishes that every person about to die has a name, a lineage and a reputation. When Arjuna collapses fifteen verses later, he is not collapsing at an abstraction. The text spent the intervening time making sure of that.