Note 93 — Chapter II · (continued 2)

These are large numbers indeed, but the poet does not limit himself to them, and in one of his flights of imagination speaks of a hundred millions of warriors having been slain in ten days by a single hero (“Bhisma Parva,” section xiv.). In another moment of inspiration he places “a hundred millions and twenty thousand” cars in a certain strategical position on the field (“Bhisma Parva,” section l.). There is, in the “Mahabharata” generally, an affectation of precision in regard to numbers, as when the narrator informs us that such a one was hit with three arrows, another with four, and a third with seven; but there is no attempt to preserve consistency, and, whenever the bard is so disposed, he revels without scruple in the biggest figures imaginable.