Ganesa

(South and Central Asian mythology)

The elephant-headed son of Shiva, who is the Hindu counterpart of Hermes, removes obstacles and vouchsafes wisdom. He is propitiated at the beginning of any important enterprise, and is invoked at the commencement of books. He often appears today on the covers of Indian students' notebooks.

Ganesa is represented as a short pot-bellied man of yellow colour, with four hands and a one-tusked elephant head, sometimes riding on a rat or attended by one. In one hand he holds a shell, in another a discus, in the third a club, and the fourth a water-lily. His temples are plentiful on the Deccan and he is depicted in many Shivite shrines.

A legend explains his elephant head as the result of a dispute. Parvati went to her bath and told her son to guard the door, which Ganesa tried to do even against Shiva. So upset was the goddess at the decapitation of their son that to pacify her Shiva replaced the head with an elephant's, the first that came to hand. The loss of one tusk is accounted for by a tale which represents parashu-rama, ‘Rama with the axe’, visiting the sleeping Shiva. Again Ganesa opposed entrance and for his pains sustained injury, though he willingly received the blow on his tusk once he recognized the visitor wielded his father's axe, which Shiva had given to the avatar.

One of the most popular of Hindu gods (see Hindu Mythology), Gaṇeśa, or Gaṇapati, the elephant-headed son of Pārvatī (see Pārvatī) and Śiva (see Śiva) is the subject of many myths. He is worshipped by Hindus called Gāṇapatyas, who even produced their own version of the Bhagavadgītā (see Bhagavadgītā) called the GaṇeśAagītā, in which Gaṇeśa replaces Kṛṣṇa (see Kṛṣṇa) as the source of wisdom. The Bṛhaddharma Purāṇa (see Purāṇas) tells how Pārvatī, the “Daughter of the Mountain,” wished for a child. Her husband Śiva, both as a yogi ascetic and as an immortal who, therefore, had no need of descendants, heaped scorn on her desire. But when Śiva saw how unhappy he had made the goddess, he agreed to her wish. He did so, however, while preserving his own distance from the conception of the child. Tearing off a piece of Pārvatī's dress, he told her to make her own baby from it. This Pārvatī did, and soon the child was nursing at her breasts. But in this version of the story, as in many others, Śiva takes a dislike to the child. Some would even say he was jealous of it. Either as a result of a curse by Śanaiścara (Saturn) or the evil gaze of Śiva, the child's head falls off. Failing in his attempt to calm his now very unhappy wife by replacing the detached head on the body, Śiva sends Nandin, his faithful bull attendant, to take the head of Indra's (see Indra) elephant Airāvata so that it might be attached to the body of Pārvatī's child. After a terrible struggle with Indra and other gods, Nandin succeeds in his mission and Śiva places the elephant's head on Pārvatī's son. He was now short and fat with a red face, but in some deeper sense he was very beautiful. He was named Gaṇeśa or Lord of his father's gaṇas (“hosts”) by Brahmā (see Brahmā) and was given a rat as his mount. It is said that, directed by the poet-sage Vyāsa (see Vyāsa), he wrote the Mahābhārata (see Mahābhārata). It is Gaṇeśa who brings wealth and success in life. In one of the many versions of his birth story, Gaṇeśa appears in the hand of Pārvatī during her bath. Gaṇeśa was, among many other things, the guardian at Pārvatī's door.