first “killed” the damsel by touching her head with the golden stick.  The return of the seven hundred rakshasas was like the noise of a mighty tempest.  One of them entered the damsel’s room and revived her, saying at the same time, “I smell a human being!"[FN#441] The damsel replied, “How can a human being come to this place?” and the rakshasa was satisfied.  During the night the damsel worms out of the rakshasi who was her mistress the secret that the lives of the seven hundred rakshasas depended on the lives of a male and female bee, which were in a wooden box at the bottom of a tank, and that the only person who could seize and kill those bees was a youth with a moon on his forehead and stars on the palms of his hands—­but there could be no such youth, and so their lives were safe.[FN#442] When the rakshasas had all gone out as usual next morning, the damsel, having been revived by the youth, told him how the demons could be killed, and, to be brief, he was not slow to put her directions into practice.  After the death of the seven hundred rakshasas, the youth took some of the kataki flowers and left the palace accompanied by the beautiful damsel, whose name was Pushpavati.  They passed through the ocean and forest of kachiri in safety, and arriving at the house in the bazar the youth with the moon on his forehead presented the kataki flower to his sister.  Going out to hunt the next day, he met the king, and his turban again falling off as he shot an arrow, the King saw the moon on his forehead and desired his friendship.  The youth invited the King to his house, and he went thither at midday.  Pushpavati then told the King (for she knew the whole story from first to last) how his seventh wife had been induced by his six other wives to ring the bell twice needlessly; how she gave birth to a boy and a girl, and pups were substituted for them, how the twins were miraculously saved and brought up in the house of a potter, and so forth.  When she had concluded the King was highly enraged, and next day caused his six wicked wives to be buried alive.  The seventh queen was brought from the market-place and reinstated in the palace, and the youth with a moon on his forehead and stars on the palms of his hands lived happily with his beautiful twin-sister.

In two other Hindu versions known to me—­but the story is doubtless as widely spread over India as we have seen it to be over Europe—­only the leading idea of Galland’s tale reappears, though one of them suggests the romance of “Helyas, the Knight of the Swan,” namely, the story called “Truth’s Triumph,” in Miss Frere’s “Old Deccan Days,” p. 55 ff.  Here a raja and his minister walking together come to a large garden, where is a bringal- tree bearing 100 fruits but having no leaves, and the minister says to the raja that whosoever should marry the gardener’s daughter should have by her 100 boys and one girl.  The raja espoused the maiden, much to the vexation of the 12 wives he had already, and then follows a