Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 10.54.8
Blended reading (Sanskrit + English inline)
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karabhāḥ
—
fingerless hands (or elephant's trunks)
Prabhupāda's purport (citing the dictionary) flags the double meaning — wrist-to-knuckle of a human, and the trunk of an elephant. Vyāsa's simile collapses the distinction: the limb of a man and the limb of a beast lie equally on the field.
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ūravaḥ
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thighs
From uru. The thigh is, in the Vedic Puruṣa-sūkta, the seat of the kṣatriya. The thighs of warriors lying severed are an emblem of kṣatriya-dharma destroyed when it is divorced from the Person who is the original Puruṣa.
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aśva-aśvatara-nāga-uṣṭra-khara-martya
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horses, donkeys, elephants, camels, wild asses, humans
Six species piled into one compound. Vyāsa flattens the hierarchy: kṣatriya and ass receive the same death in the absence of Kṛṣṇa-consciousness. Saṁsāra is the great leveller; only bhakti differentiates.
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iṣu-āsāḥ
—
bows
Iṣu (arrow) + āsa (resting place, container) — the bow as that-which-holds-arrows. Even the names of weapons in Sanskrit carry the architecture of attachment; nothing in this scene is ornamental.
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asi
—
swords
Asi is also the second person singular of √as ('you are') — and the Upaniṣadic mahā-vākya 'tat tvam asi' famously turns on it. Here the swords lie in the dirt: the Vedic 'thou art' goes nowhere when the 'thou' has not surrendered to the 'That' who is Kṛṣṇa.
Karabhāḥ indicates the portion of the hand from the wrist to the base of the fingers. The same word may also indicate an elephant’s trunk, and thus in this verse the implication is that the thighs lying on the battlefield resembled the trunks of elephants.
Karabha means part of the hand from the wrist to the little finger.
Karabhā means forearms in the context, though it means literally “from the wrist to root of fingers.” The forearms appeared like karabhas since they narrowed in a similar fashion.
The weapons in the hand are mentioned according to the distance they inflict injury—from close to far: swords, clubs, arrows. The limbs are mentioned in order of the height from which they fell. The horses, donkeys and elephants were carriers of warriors and the camels, wild asses and humans carried weapons for fighting.
The battlefield becomes an anatomy lesson — hands, thighs, donkey heads, elephant trunks lying together. The verse is not gore for its own sake; it is the Bhāgavatam's blunt statement that the body, severed from its purpose in Kṛṣṇa's service, is no more than its parts.
My note
Source: vedabase.io