“Salutations to Parjanya!” had cried the Great Sage Vasiṣṭha.
“Salutations to Parjanya!” had cried the Great King Sudās.
“Salutations to Parjanya!” had cried the mountains, had cried the overcast skies.
“Salutations to Parjanya!” had cried the army of the Bhāratas, charging their chariots in teutonic fury, lightning flaring in the background, and their enemies, drowning in the River Irāvatī whose dykes Vasiṣṭha had breached, had known their time had come. The Alliance of the Ten Kings had been crushed, Sudās had ascended the throne as king of all men, and Vasiṣṭha had held high the eternal flame of the Bhāratas before a saluting populace.
After the generation of Vasiṣṭha and Sudās, after at most the generation of their many grandchildren, that is all that man remembered.
But victory was decided before even the conches of battle were blown – the battle only served to inform men of what was already known to the gods. For the many Bhārata men and women who had given their lives in the years leading up to the battle, their prize was not glory, not attention, not recognition – their only prize was victory.
