The scene shifts: Thought is bemoaning his losses to Intention, when Sarasvati enters and, after instructing him on the means whereby he might regain his composure, encourages Thought to be reconciled with Dispassion, a son he had abandoned at birth long ago. Father and son joyfully reunite, and Sarasvati, recognizing that Thought cannot remain alone following the loss of his first wife, Eva Lucienne, or active engagement in the world, now confirms his marriage with Diva Lucienne, the process of disengagement. _______
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Having set Thought’s household in its new and proper order, the goddess commands the performance of memorial offerings for their deceased kin.
Faith and Peace are in dialogue, in the prologue to act six, revealing that, following Thought’s reconciliation with Dispassion, the Inner Man, who is the Supreme Self, is now increasingly coming into his own. Owing to his newfound detachment even Lex has grown quiescent, as there is no longer reason to contemplate consequential actions, whether the goals be good or bad. Nevertheless, the old foe Magnus Nescience has been still able to stir up some trouble: he has managed to conjure up visions of the delectable state called the “Honeyed Realm,” so that the Inner Man was for a while tempted to return to samsara, until Reason entered the scene to snap him out of it. Faith and Peace conclude their discussion, hastening to arrange for Intuition’s meeting at last with Upanishad.
The Inner Man now sings the praises of Hail Vishnu, when Peace enters with Upanishad. The latter is hesitant to approach, for she recalls that she had been rejected once before and thereafter fell into grave difficulty. Peace objects that the Inner Man was blameless and that it was Nescience whose nefarious schemes had caused Upanishad to be separated from Intuition. She had taken refuge with her daughter Gita, that is, the “Bhagavad·gita,” in order to escape from Reason, a state of affairs that Intuition finds puzzling. All gather before the Inner Man, who honors Upanishad and inquires as to what she had suffered during her prolonged exile.
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Upanishad relates that she first dwelt among foolish persons, who understood nothing of what she had to say. She encountered the traditions of Vedic ritual and thought that she might stay with them, but was able to find only a temporary accommodation based on the mistaken assumption that the Self of which she spoke was the ritual agent. Eventually, these traditions, personified as Sacrificial Science, found her to be a bad influence and so asked her to leave. Meeting then Hermeneutics, the Mimansaka school, her experience with Sacrificial Science was about to be repeated, when the famed Mimansaka teacher Kumarila intervened to introduce the notion of the dual nature of the Self: the aspect of which Upanishad spoke was, he thought, quite distinct from a second dimension, the agent invoked in the ritual traditions. Intuition interrupts her narrative at this point to praise Kumarila’s good sense.
Upanishad continues her story, recounting her experiences with the philosophical systems of Vaisheshika, Nyaya, and Sankhya, all of whom derided her teaching of the absolute Brahman 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