Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 556

HINDU GIANTS
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Their declared enemies, the giants, and the gods
themselves, were continually playing evil pranks with them.
For instance, their enemies made themselves invisible, and,
flying in the air, defiled the offerings by letting fall upon
them pieces of meat or other impure substances, so that
these pious acts were of no avail.
I should have written at less length about these famous
giants, if they had not seemed to me to be grotesque
representations of those of Holy Scripture \ whose crimes
This race of men
in a great measure caused the Flood.
again flourished after that great catastrophe, and were not
2
entirely destroyed until the time of Joshua
The Hindu giants are represented as being of such
colossal stature that on one occasion, in order to wake one
of them, it was necessary for several elephants to walk
over his body. Even then the giant hardly felt the dis-
comfort of this enormous weight but, by dint of stamp-
ing on him, the huge animals at last produced a slight
sensation, resembling the tickling which an ordinary man
It was this
feels when an ant or a fly crawls over him.
tickling, rather than the weight of the elephants, which
roused the giant, the hairs of whose body were like the
trunks of full-grown forest trees. During one of his wars
with certain gods, this same giant fastened a huge rock to
each of his hairs, and thus equipped, he advanced into the
middle of the enemy's army, gave himself a good shake,
and thus hurled off the rocks, which falling right and left
crashed his enemies to the last man.
The giant Ravana, who carried off Seeta, Rama's wife,
had ten heads. His palace in the Island of Ceylon, of which
he was king, was of such an enormous height that at mid-
day the sun passed under one of its arcades.
These giants were all of an extremely mischievous dis-
A great number
position, especially the Brahmin giants.
of this caste had, by the way, been turned into giants as
a punishment for former crimes. In fact, there were whole
armies of them, and sometimes there was civil war between
them, though more often they joined forces in fighting
Occasionally they adopted a hermit's
against the gods.
sacrifices.
.
;
life,
without thereby changing their character, or becoming
2
1
Numbers xiii Joshua xi.
Genesis vi. 4.
;