Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 557

AN ARTFUL STRATAGEM
517
The penance performed by the giant
so long and severe, that he thereby
induced Siva to grant him the power of reducing to ashes
The favour
all those on whose heads he placed his hands.
better
disposed.
Bhasmasura was
thus obtained, the ungrateful wretch decided to let Siva
have some experience of the power
newly conferred upon him. Siva was at his wits' end to
know how to escape from his enemy, when fortunately he
was saved by a stratagem of Vishnu. The latter per-
suaded the giant to put his hand on his own head, which
he did without thinking, and reduced himself to ashes.
The above is a sample of Hindu mythology.
It may be presumed that these giant enemies of the
Vanaprasthas were merely the chiefs of the countries in
which the hermits had taken up their abode. These chiefs,
frightened by the continual sacrifices and mystic rites of
the formidable strangers, tried to get rid of them by stirring
up quarrels among them and otherwise interfering with
Except the first of these hermit
their religious practices.
Vanaprasthas, most of those who embraced this kind of
life gave themselves up entirely to the cultivation of magic
and astrology, and, impotent though their mysterious
practices were in reality, they were easily able, with the
help of their false prestige, to spread terror in feeble and
credulous minds. Some enthusiastic poet, in relating the
history of the quarrels between these hermit Brahmins and
the mighty princes who hated them, no doubt turned the
Certainly no more than this was required
latter into giants.
to make the legend credible among a people so addicted to
the marvellous.
Be this as it may, it appears certain that
the attacks made on the Vanaprasthas finally sapped their
power to its very foundations, for the sect no longer exists
himself, his benefactor,
in India.
CHAPTER XXXIII
Penance as a Means
of purifying the Soul.
prasthas.
Modern Gymnosophists, or
tion by Fire.
—
The ancient
— The
Naked
Penance
of the Vana-
Purifica-
Penitents.
—
hermit-philosophers of India maintained that
to perform divers acts of penance in order
to disperse the phantoms of illusion, or Maya, by which
it
was necessary