The Story about a Giant
H. (Henry) Parker translation
After that the two went, it is said. Procuring provisions, they began to go. At the time when they are going thus for not much time, one man was struck by inability [to proceed]. The man said, it is said, “Don’t you go here alone,” he said.
“Without going alone what shall I do?” he said. After that, that man died.
This man having gone, contracted (lit., tied) a marriage. Putting [out of consideration] the displeasure of the woman’s two parents, he contracted the marriage. The mother-in-law and father-in-law, both of them, having said, “Don’t you two remain in my house,” told them to go. After that, the son-in-law having caused thieves to be brought, took the goods in the house that he had not brought; the best (hon̆da hon̆da) goods the man took, a few things those men got.
That he is doing thus was known to everybody. Having perceived it they told the matter to the King of that city. The King, causing the young man to be brought, and having given him many offices, made him remain near the King; he is stopping there.
The giant said, “I am not unable to do it.”
After that, the King said, “What are the things thou wantest for it?” he asked.
When he asked, he said, “Should I receive a tusk elephant and the sword, it will do.” Afterwards he gave the tusk elephant and sword.
Well then, beginning from that day, he remained exercising the sovereignty [over the half of the kingdom] until the time when he dies.
North-western Province.
I was informed that in the allusion to the Sky Buffalo which gored the earth, reference is made to the country in which the sky pierces (that is, touches) the earth (see vol. i, p. 284). The Sky Buffalo is not mentioned elsewhere in these stories.
In the Kathā Sarit Sāgara (Tawney), vol. i, p. 6, the God Śiva is represented as saying, “Moreover, this world resembling a skull, rests in my hand; for the two skull-shaped halves of the [Mundane] egg before mentioned are called heaven and earth.” It is evident that here also the two halves of the egg, that is, the sky and the earth, are supposed to be in contact, the sky resting on the earth. In the Rigveda they are termed two bowls; the sun travelled in the hollow space between them (i, clx, 2), and the upper one was supported by pillars.
The feats of the youthful giant in chasing and seizing wild animals are borrowed from the Mahāvansa, chapter xxiii (p. 161 of Professor Geiger’s translation), where it is stated of Khañjadēva, one of the ten leading chiefs under King Duṭṭha-Gāmaṇi in the second century B.C., that “when he went a-hunting with the village folk he chased at these times great buffaloes, as many as rose up, and grasped them by the leg with his hand, and when he had whirled them round his head the young man dashed them to the ground, breaking their bones.”