Things

Source: here.

Over and over the downward turn of the yuga was burning us. We were reviewing the reports from the unfair battle with Shoi on the pAShaNDa hill. We noticed that there were two major points that came up:

  1. there was a signal known as “daiva” that inexplicably came up at a time when the troops thought all was hunky-dory. The shachiva was completely blind to this signal but the amAtya saw it and moved troops in panic.
  2. There was the signal known as “oShadhi-vanaspati” which we received at around the midday hour. We did not know whether to charge with out troops or to negotiate. We decided to negotiate to buy time hoping the amAtya would strike a blow with his division and the muni may arrive with his reinforcements in the mean time. Our negotiations were very successful on the mUlaka bridge and the bhutapati temple road. This gave us time to move our troops closer with the muni’s reinforcements. But the amAtya had panicked and we failed to complete the encircling move. We were just preparing for a thrust when Shoi saw the breach in the amAtya’s section and made a deadly thrust with the entire enemy decision. The amAtya was wounded in the encounter. The shachIva and amAtya sustained injuries when the turushkapura allies of Shoi made a surprise sally on their camps. Me and the muni escaped in time though. But the losses to the troops had greatly set us back.

But going back to the reports we are disappointed to see that we repeated the mistake when confronted by a similar trap. It is almost a Hindu aspect to commit the same military mistakes over and over again. Now with our troops reduced we were not clear as to what strategy to adopt.