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.”