in favor of cosmologies based on atoms or prime matter, and eventually condemned her as a nihilist. Fleeing, therefore, from philosophical arguments and speculations, she wandered until she found a safe haven in the ashram of her daughter Gita.
Her travails now exposed, the Inner Man engages both her and Intuition in dialogue to discover the true meaning of her teaching, whereby the great affirmations (mahavakya) of the Upanishads—such as the famous saying “thou art that”—are introduced. As their conversation advances, Contemplation joins them, carrying a message from Hail ________
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Vishnu revealing that Upanishad is already pregnant with Scientia and Wisdom Moon. Upanishad then departs together with her husband Intuition. The Inner Man merges with Contemplation and, in his absorption, realizes that Scientia has taken birth and completed the conquest of Nescience. Wisdom Moon joins him on stage, they embrace joyfully, and the Inner Man praises Hail Vishnu for his good fortune. The goddess arrives, confirming that all that was to be done is now concluded. The play ends with final benedictions.
A Bit of History
To appreciate “The Rise of Wisdom Moon” more fully, we must consider some salient points of its historical, literary, and religious-philosophical background. The first was largely forgotten in India itself prior to the reconstruction of India’s pre-Islamic history as this emerged following the considerable archeological and epigraphical discoveries of the nineteenth century. Just how obscure the relevant history was prior to these developments may be gleaned from the dedication of Taylor’s 1812 translation, where we read:
Perhaps some conjecture may be formed concerning the age of the Play, from the mention which is made of the King Shri Kirti Varma, who is said to have attended its representation, along with his court. My Pandita, indeed, says, that he is a personification of the fame or glory of Gopala [the god Krishna]; but I am more inclined to think that he was a real personage, and that the poet, out of compliment or flattery, represents Gopala or Krishna as fighting his battles, and establishing him on the ________
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throne. If the Shri Kirti Varma was a real being, he probably reigned over Magadha or Behar, the sovereigns of which also extended their empire to the provinces which lie northward of the Ganges; for Varma, or warrior, was a family name assumed by the Magadha kings, and Shri was prefixed as a title, intimating success or prosperity. If the conjecture be correct, it would lead us to ascribe a considerable antiquity to the Play.2
He goes on to propose that it should be dated to the latter half of the first millennium ce, though without finding evidence for a more precise estimation.
That the pandit with whom Taylor worked was inclined to regard the occurrence of the name Gopala as strictly referring to god Krishna was perhaps a legacy of the popularity which the play came to enjoy in north Indian Vaishnava circles from about the fifteenth century on, leading him to interpret away its historical references in the light of this understanding. Taylor, however, proved to be correct in his guess that Kirti·varman was a real individual, though his attempt to place him in the kingdom of Magadha was in error. It was not, at any rate, until 1865, when Alexander Cunningham discovered an inscription of the Chandella dynasty at Mahoba, situated in modern Uttar Pradesh to the north of Khajuraho, that the evidence needed to decide the issue at last became available. Though Cunningham was aware of the significance of his find, the results were for the first time set out clearly by E. Hultzsch, in a study of the Mahoba inscription published in 1888. For here, in the 26th verse, we read that Kirti· ________
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varman “acquired fame by crushing with his strong arm the haughty Laksmikarna, whose armies had destroyed many princes.” (Hultzsch 1888: 219–20). And in other sources the Chedi monarch Lakshmi·karna—Karna in our play—is mentioned as “death to the lord of Kalanjara,”3 referring to his conquest of the Chandella’s chief fortress. Given the chronological knowledge derived from the broader study of medieval Indian epigraphy, “The Rise of Wisdom Moon” could now be understood to celebrate a Chandella restoration that occurred sometime not long after 1060.4
The Chandella dynasty had emerged from among feudatories of the Pratiharas who ruled in late first-millennium Western India, and they established themselves as the independent lords of much of what is today Madhya Pradesh by about the middle of the tenth century. Like many other royal families in India, their true beginnings, which were perhaps tribal, were disguised by a legend of divine origin, in this case stemming from the god of the moon, Chandra. This association was used to explain their name, Chandella, and is mentioned early in the first act of our play, where we find a reference to Kirti·varman as belonging to the “lunar line” (1.16). The title of the play and the name of its character Wisdom Moon further celebrate this connection.
Kingship in India was always a rough and tumble business, and the Chandellas, as was typical, were locked in shifting patterns of rivalries and alliances with their neighbors, including their former masters, the Pratiharas, as well as the Kala·churis who ruled in Chedi to the south, and the Palas and Senas to the east, in Bihar and Bengal, together with many less prominent players. The Chandellas ________
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themselves were centered in the region that is today called Bundelkhand, in the northeast of Madhya Pradesh, where they commanded the fortress of Kalan·jara and had their cultural and religious capital at Khajuraho. Their territory at its greatest extent embraced much of present Madhya Pradesh, and to some degree reached beyond this as well. Chandella dominance in this part of Central India endured for roughly three centuries. From the eleventh century on, they were among the north Indian dynasties that were regularly harassed by Muslim Turkic raiders first from Central Asia and later the Delhi Sultanate. The fortress of Kalan· jara was itself taken by the conqueror Qutb-ud-din Aibak in 1203, but appears to have been regained not more than two years later. The Chandellas, though much weakened, continued to maintain a measure of sovereignty for another century, until they finally fade from the record with the reign of Hammira·varman (c. 1288–1311), the last of their rulers to have left surviving inscriptions.
Among the Chandellas, royal succession passed strictly from father to son, with only a small number of exceptions. One of these was the king with whom we are concerned, Kirti·varman, who inherited the throne from his elder brother Deva·varman (c. 1050–1060), apparently after the latter passed away leaving no heir. It is possible, though we do not have sufficient information to be sure, that this was due to the conquest of the Chandellas by their Kala·churi foe Lakshmi·karna (c. 1040–1073), who had embarked upon a scheme of conquest so ambitious that he has sometimes been characterized as a “Napoleon” of medieval India (Dikshit 1977: 103). What both the Ma- ________
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