The Rise of Wisdom Moon. Krishna mishra

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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      hoba inscription and “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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