In one episode, for example, the Vrishnis, a tribe whose warriors include the hero Krishna, are beset by the forces of a leader named Salva.
"The cruel Salva had come mounted on the Saubha chariot that can go anywhere, and from it he killed many valiant Vrishni youths and evilly devastated all city parks."
The Saubha is at once Salva's city, flagship, and battle headquarters. In it, he can fly wherever he chooses. Fortunately, the Vrishni heroes are similarly well equipped, and at one point have Salva at their mercy. The hero Pradyumna is about to finish him off with a special weapon, when the highest gods stop him "Not a man in battle is safe from this arrow," they say, and declare that Salva will fall to Krishna.
Krishna took to the sky in pursuit of Salva, but his Saubha clung to the sky at a leagues length... He threw at me rockets, missiles, spears, spikes, battleaxes, three-bladed javelins, flame-throwers, without pausing... The sky... seemed to hold a hundred suns, a hundred moons... and a hundred myriad stars. Neither day nor night could be made out, or the points of a compass.
Krishna, however, wards off Salva's attack with what sounds like antiballistic missiles; I warded them off as they loomed towards me
With my swift-striking shafts, as they flashed through the sky, And I cut them into two or three pieces with mine --
There was a great din in the sky above.
However, the Saubha becomes invisible. Krishna then loads a special weapon, perhaps an ancient version of a smart bomb? I quickly laid on an arrow, which killed by seeking out sound, to kill them... All the Danavas [Salva's troops] who had been screeching lay dead, killed by the blazing sun like arrows that were triggered by sound.
However, the Sauba itself escaped the attack. Krishna fires his "favorite fire weapon" at it, a discus shaped like the "haloed sun". The discus breaks the Saubha in two, and the city falls from the sky, killing Salva. This is the end of the Mahabharata.
One of the most intriguing thing about it is that the use of Pradyumna's special arrow, from which "not a man in battle is safe", was outlawed by the gods. What sort of weapon could this be? Another chapter, describing the use of the Agneya weapon by the hero Adwattan. When the weapon, a "blazing missile of smokeless fire" is unleashed;
Dense arrows of flame, like a great shower, issued forth upon creation, encompassing the enemy... A thick gloom swiftly settled upon the Pandava hosts. All points of the compass were lost in darkness. Fierce winds began to blow. Clouds roared upward, showering dust and gravel.
Birds coaked madly... the very elements seemed disturbed. The sun seemed to waver in the heavens. The earth shook, scorched by the terrible violent heat of this weapon. Elephants burst into flame and ran to and fro in a frenzy... over a vast area, other animals crumpled to the ground and died. From all points of the compass the arrows of flame rained continuously and fiercely.
And if that sounded like a firestorm, then a similar weapon fired by Gurkha sounds like nothing less than a nuclear blast complete with radioactive fallout;
Gurkha, flying in his swift and powerful Vimana, hurled against the three cities of the Vrishnis and Andhakas a single projectile charged with all the power of the universe. An incandescent column of smoke and fire, as brilliant as ten thousand suns, rose in all its splendor. It was the unknown weapon, the iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death which reduced to ashes the entire race of Vrishnis and Andhakas.
The corpses were so burnt they were no longer recognizable. Hair and nails fell out. Pottery broke without cause... Foodstuffs were poisoned. To escape, the warriors threw themselves in streams to wash themselves and their equipment.
Plan of Pitha (Base)
