“The Rise of Wisdom Moon” make clear, however, is that Kirti·varman was installed (or reinstalled) following Karna’s defeat by the resurgent Chandellas. As we have seen above, this appears to have occurred during the 1060s, a period during which Karna’s fortunes in general had begun to turn.
As the play affirms, but without a confirming record being found in the extant inscriptions, Kirti·varman’s success was due to the heroic action of his “natural ally” (sahajasuhrt) Gopala. Discounting Taylor’s suggestion that this was but a reference to the divine aid of Krishna, we must assume that the testimony of the play is in essence true, for it is hardly possible that a literary work ascribing a royal restoration to a subsidiary lord could have circulated—and indeed present itself as a work to be performed before the king—if the court was not substantially in accord with the account given there. The description of Gopala as Kirti· varman’s “natural ally” has sometimes been regarded as supplying a plausible explanation in this case, and, as some historians have noted, the term in fact had two precise significations in ancient Indian political theory, referring either to a king who was one’s enemy’s enemy, or to the lords and retainers belonging to one’s maternal clan.5 It seems therefore that Gopala must have been one of Kirti· varman’s maternal uncles or cousins. I think that we can go beyond this, however, and suggest as an hypothesis that, given the unusual succession from elder to younger brother, and the likelihood in the light of what else may be known of Chandella genealogy, that Kirti·varman must have been rather young, perhaps even a child, when he succeeded
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to the throne. For his was a notably long reign, spanning roughly four decades, until the closing years of the eleventh century. The Kala·churi Karna, therefore, may have invaded at a time when the Chandella line was particularly vulnerable—when Deva·varman had not yet produced an heir—and it was because of his rescue of the dynasty under such circumstances that Gopala’s deed could be publicly celebrated, not least at the court of the king he had succeeded in placing upon the throne.6
It is unfortunate that the spotty record of Chandella history provides us with few indications concerning the events of Kirti·varman’s rule following the defeat of Lakshmi·karna. The construction of three important reservoirs is attributed to him by local tradition, and two temples of Shiva, one at Mahoba and the other at Ajayagadh, in the immediate vicinity of Khajuraho, may have been built with his patronage. An inscription accompanying a Jain image found in a village near Mahoba confirms that he extended his protection to this religion and mentions two of his officers as Jain adherents. Other inscriptions laud his personal qualities, praising him as a righteous ruler whose good works purified the evil of the age of Kali (Dikshit 1977: 109).
An important historical problem that remains, of course, is the identity of the author of our play, Krishna·mishra. Besides the addition to his name of the title yati, or “ascetic,” and the statement in the first act that he was Gopala’s guru, nothing at all is known of him with certainty. Later tradition maintains that he was an ascetic of the hamsa order, which, in the light of his clear affiliation with the philosophical tradition of Advaita Vedanta, is not an impossibil- ________
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ity. However, because yati was sometimes adopted as a sobriquet by lay scholars, and because Krishna·mishra’s roles as a poet and counselor of a lord seem most often to have been occupied by lay specialists and not renunciates, skepticism about this tradition seems warranted. And a tale found in the Prakasa commentary relates that he wrote “The Rise of Wisdom Moon” on behalf of a disciple who was attached to poetry but disliked philosophy, and so needed to swallow the bitter dose of Vedanta mixed into the sugary syrup of the theater. This quaint story, however, must have come into circulation at some point after the real historical origins of the play were largely forgotten (Krishnamachariar 1970 [1937]: 676).
Despite the extreme poverty of our knowledge of Krishna· mishra the man, his work permits us to make some judgments regarding his character. He was the confidant and teacher of a leading lord of his time, and his qualifications for this role included a broad philosophical and literary culture. His deep understanding of the spiritual tradition with which he was affiliated was leavened by an amused view of human weakness and folly. As we become more familiar with his work, we may imagine that we catch occasional glimpses within it of the workman as well.
Literature or Philosophy?
Allegory was never recognized as a distinct genre by Sanskrit writers on literary criticism and poetics. It was not until recent times, after Western literary categories became known, that writers in the modern Indian languages coined the Sanskrit neologisms pratikanataka (“symbolic drama”) ________
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and rupakanataka (“metaphorical drama”) in order to describe “The Rise of Wisdom Moon” and works resembling it.7 Nevertheless, allegory had in fact been used by Indian authors from the earliest times. The image of the twoheaded bird, for instance, first found in the Rgveda (i.164. 20), was taken over in the Mundaka Upanisad as an allegory of the dimorphism of the soul. By citing this famous passage in act six (6.112 [20]), Krishna·mishra in effect plants the roots of his inspiration deep in the most ancient strata of Sanskrit literature.
Fragments of early Buddhist dramas, dating to the first centuries ce, also make use of allegory, and include characters with names like “Fame” and “Pride.” Nevertheless, these plays, so far as we can now know them, do not appear to have been sustained allegories, that is, they were primarily stories of Buddhist saints, in which some episodes took allegorical form. And there is no evidence of knowledge of these works among later Indian writers, much less of their exerting any influence upon the way they wrote.8
At the same time, regarding several of the devices he em- ploys in developing his allegory, Krishna·mishra’s debts to earlier dramatic writing can sometimes be discerned. One example is to be found in his satire of the three heterodox schools—Jainism, Buddhism and Kapalika Shaivism—in the third act. In this case, the inspiration of the seventh-century farce Mattavilasa, the “Madman’s Play,” of Mahen- dra·varman seems unmistakeable.9 And in Krishna·mishra’s incorporation of elements of philosophical debate and dialogue into the drama at several points, he may well have the model of Jayanta·bhatta’s Agamadambara, “Much Ado ________
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About Religion,” in mind.10 In sum, although Krishna· mishra’s contribution to Indian literature was not the invention of allegory as such, he may nonetheless be credited with introducing its employment in order to structure an entire literary work from beginning to end. That the tradition itself recognized this to be an original contribution may be gathered from the fact that several of the later Sanskrit
