________________
DAY, 1990.]
MISCELLANEA.
155
water from the well to quench his thirst. The unsuspecting lad, seeing nothing extraordinary in this request, ran at once to the well, leaving his magic sword under his pillow where he had placed it for the night. The two wicked brothers thereapon followed him stealthily, and just as be was bending over the well to draw water, they seized him by the legs and throw him in. hea I foremost. This done, they went back to the place where they had pitched their camp, took possession of the magic sword, and telling the fairies that their cousin had gone away in a lvance to apprise their grandfather of their coming, and to prepare him for giving them fit reception, made arrangements for resuming the journey. The little sprites, however, at once suspected foul play, but seeing that they were in the power of those unscrupulous young men, said nothing at the time, and quietly went away with them. But as they marched along they took the precaution of throwing large tufts of their lustrous hair here and there on the road, so that, should their young captor be still alive, he might find no difficulty in following them.
The two brothers journeyed home direct and in due course arrived there. They were received with great joy and delight by their indulgent grand-parent, who was in a fever of impatience to behold the wonderful tree. The two wicked young men soon found however that, though they had become possessed of the magic sword, they did not know how to use it so as to convert the fairies into the magnificent tree.
They, therefore, turned the sword about in several ways, passed it backwards and forwards over the heads of the fairies, and tried diverse methods of bringing about the transformation, but in vain, till at last the old Raja was very much enraged with them and rebuked them severely for thus imposing upon his credulity.
In the meantime our hero, who had been taken out of the well by & passing stranger, had speedily found his way home guided by the tufts of the fairies' hair. So one day, just as the Raja, being fairly tired of the lies with which his younger daughter's sons were putting him off from day to day, was about to question the fairies themselves as to the truth of their story, the young Prince rushed into the gard en where the court was assembled, and stood before his aged grandfather. As soon as the fairies spied him, they all cried out with joy "Here's the brave young hero, who killed our father, Lal, and brought us away from fairyland, and he alone knows the secret of converting us into the tree with the silver trank. These others are murderers and robbers, for they robbed their cousin and tried to kill him."
At these words of the fairies the Raja ordered those two grandsons of his to deliver up the magic sword into the hands of their cousin, which they did with crestfallen and downcast looks. Our hero immediately waved it about in the proper way, when behold, there stood the magnificent tree in place of the beautiful little maidens !
The old Raja was overjoyed at his dream being at last realized, and embracing his eldest daughter's only son with great warmth, he there and then proclaimed him his heir, and on hcaring from him of the treatment he had received at the hands of his cousins ordered them to instant execution.
MISCELLANEA. CALCULATIONS OF HINDU DATES. Sanskrit, and old-Kanarese Inscriptions, No. 99, No. 36.
line 31 ff.), runs - Saka-nfipa-kal- &tita-samvatIn a stone inscription of the time of the sara-satamga!u 1121neya Siddhartthi-samvat. Hoysals king Vira-Ballala or BallAla IL, sarada pratham- Åshada(dha)-sukla-paksh-ash. on a tablet which, at the time of my visit, tami-Bșihaspativara-Bya(vya)tipata-punya-dina. was standing against the outside of the south dôl & Bya(vya)tipâta-nimittam, -"on a meritori. wall of the courtyard of the temple of the god ous day, (combining) Thursday and the VyatiTriko eśvara at Gadag, the chief town of the pata (yoga), which is the eighth tithi of the Gaday Taluka in the Dh&rwad District, Bombay bright fortnight of the first Åshadhs of the Presidency, the date (from the photograph, Pali, Siddharthin samvatsara, which is the 1121st
