Ganeshaगणेश

Ganesha, the elephant-headed son of Shiva and Parvati, is the remover of obstacles and the lord of beginnings. By long convention he is worshipped first, before any other deity, at the opening of rituals, journeys, examinations, weddings and books; manuscripts across the centuries begin with a salutation to him. As Gaṇapati he is chief of Shiva's attendant hosts, the gaṇas; as Vighneśvara he is master of obstacles, who places them as well as removes them, and must therefore be propitiated at every threshold. His cult crosses every sectarian line, and his image, portly, genial and instantly recognisable, may be the most reproduced in Indian art.

The story

The Purāṇas tell his birth variously, but the best-known account has Parvati fashion a boy from the paste of her own body and set him to guard her door. Refused entry to his own wife's chambers by a son he does not recognise, Shiva strikes off the boy's head; to console the grieving Parvati, the head of an elephant is brought and joined to the body, and the restored child is adopted as first among the gods. Other stories explain his broken tusk: in one he snaps it off himself to serve as a stylus when he takes down the Mahābhārata at the sage Vyāsa's dictation, the condition being that the poet never pause. In a much-loved episode he wins a race around the universe against his brother Kartikeya by simply circling his parents, in whom, he reasons, all worlds are contained.

Iconography

Ganesha is shown pot-bellied, with one tusk whole and one broken, holding among other emblems the goad, the noose, the broken tusk and a bowl of modaka sweets, of which he is famously fond. His mount is the mouse or rat, an incongruity the tradition delights in and reads as the great god's reach into the smallest places. He may dance, sit at ease, or appear as an infant on Parvati's lap. The wide forehead, the curled trunk turning towards the sweets: the image balances majesty and comedy with a poise no other deity attempts.

Worship

A distinct Gāṇapatya current, taking Ganesha as the supreme deity, existed by the medieval period and produced its own text, the Ganeśa Purāṇa; but his real dominion is the ordinary devotion of households everywhere. His great festival, Ganesh Chaturthi, is kept with particular splendour in Maharashtra, where in the late nineteenth century it was reshaped into a grand public celebration; clay images are installed, honoured for some days, and carried in procession to immersion in water. His worship travelled with Indian trade and religion across Asia, and figures of Ganesha appear from Southeast Asia to Japan.