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Lord Ganesh
Lord Ganesh (Ganesha),
in Hinduism, is
a son of Shiva and Parvati, and the
husband of Bharati, Riddhi and Siddhi. In art, he is depicted as a pot
bellied yellow or red god with four arms and the head of a one-tusked
elephant, riding or attended to by a mouse. Typically, his name is
prefixed with the Hindu title of respect, 'Shri.' He
is one of the most beloved gods in Hinduism, because of his kindness,
loyalty, and playful nature. He is also widely respected and
worshipped by many
Buddhist,
and his statue can be found in many Buddhist temples.
This statue of Lord Ganesha
was created in the Mysore District of Karnataka in the 13th
century.
Lord Ganesh acquired his head through
varying methods in different stories. In one, Shiva decapitated him
because Lord Ganesha refused to allow him to enter the bath while
Parvati was bathing. Shiva had to give him the new head to placate his
wife. In another version, Parvati showed the child off to Shiva, whose
face burned his head to ashes, which Brahma told Shiva to replace with
the first head he could find—in this case, that of an elephant. The
lack of a second tusk is explained by different stories. An
avatar of
Vishnu, Parashurama, once went to visit Shiva but the way was blocked
by Lord Ganesh. Parasurama threw his axe at him and Lord Ganesha,
knowing the axe had been given to him by Shiva, allowed it to cut off
one of his tusks. Yet another myth is that, in the process of writing
the Mahabharata (at the dictation of Vyasa), Lord
Ganesh found that his pen had broken, and in the urgency of taking
down the great words, snapped off his left tusk as a replacement
quill.
Lord Ganesha is known as Aumkara,
because his body mirrors the shape of the
Aum;
the elephant god is thus seen as the embodiment of
the cosmos. His elephantine head symbolizes the intelligence and
beatitude of the elephant, powerful, yet gentle. His vehicle is a
mouse (mooshikam), and this symbolizes the intellect, small enough to
find out any secret in the most remote of places. It also signifies
his humility, that he espouses the company of one of the smaller
creatures.
He is the lord of wisdom,
intelligence, education, prudence, luck and fortune, gates, doors,
doorways, household and writing. He is the remover of
obstacles, and as such it is normal to invoke him before the
undertaking of any task with such incantations as Aum Shri
Ganeshaya Namah (hail the name of Ganesha), or similar.
Birth of Lord Ganesha - The
first incident is the birth of Lord Ganesh and how he got his elephant
head. When Parvati was idly playing around with some mud one day, she
noticed that she had unwittingly created the form of a boy. When she
noticed this and expressed surprise at the beauty of the form, she
breathed life into it and thus Lord Ganesha was created. This occured
in the days when Shiva used to go away on long periods of meditation/tapas.
The boy thus grew with time. It then so happened that one day Parvati
asked Lord Ganesh to stay outside and guard the house while she
bathed. She was specific that nobody should be let inside. The little
boy understood the instructions and took it seriously. Thus when Shiva
happened to come by and saw a young boy guarding the door, he was
surprised. He tried to go in but Lord Ganesha bared him from entering.
Shiva questioned him, but the boy simply sayed that his mom has forbid
anybody from entering the house. Shiva at first reasoned with him, and
then got angry and cut of Lord Ganesh's head with his Trishul
(trident). Parvati obviously on hearing this commotion and
learning what has happened is disconsolate. She demanded that Shiva
restore Ganesha's life at once. But unfortunately, Shiva's Trishul was
so powerful that it had hurled Ganesha's head very far off. All
attempts to find the head were in vain. As a last resort, Shiva
approached Brahma who suggested that he replace Lord
Ganesha's head with the first animal that comes his way. Shiva sent
his ganas to accordingly get the head of the first thing that they
saw. The ganas spotted a baby elephant whose head got transplanted
onto Lord Ganesh. That is the reason Mud Ganeshas are made to this
day in the villages of India for worship during Lord Ganesh Chaturti
and then dissolved in flowing water or well water. ( No other God is
worshipped thus ). That is also the reason shape is also given to Lord
Ganesha using the auspicious turmeric instead of mud, for "first
pooja" before the start of any major pooja.
Lord Ganesha's reverence for
his parents - Once there was a competition between Ganesha
and his brother Karttikeya as to who could circumambulate the three
worlds faster. Karttikeya went off on a journey to cover the three
worlds while Ganesha simply circumambulated his parents. When asked
why he did so, he answered that, to him his parents meant the three
worlds.
Lord Ganesha and Vyasa - When
Veda Vyasa was beginning to write the epic Mahabharata, he requested
Ganesha to be the scribe. Being playful, Ganesha agreed to be the
scribe on one condition - that Vyasa must recite the epic non-stop.
Vyasa agreed and thus the great epic of Mahabharata was written by
Ganesha.
Lord Ganesh and the moon - Once,
Ganesha accidentally tripped and fell, breaking one of his tusks in
the process (this is also said to be one of the reasons for Ganesha's
half or missing tusk). Chandradev (Moon God) saw this and laughed.
Ganesha, being the short-tempered one, cursed Chandradev that anyone
who happens to see the moon will incur bad luck. Hearing this,
Chandradev realised his folly and asked for forgiveness from Ganesha.
Ganesha relented and since a curse cannot be revoked, only softened,
Ganesha softened his curse such that anyone who looks at the moon
during a Surya-grahan (solar eclipse) would incur bad-luck. Thus was
born the notion of not looking at the moon during a solar eclipse in
India.
Immersion of Lord Ganesh murti
at Chowpatty Beach, Bombay
In South India, there is an important
festival honoring Lord Ganesha. While it is most popular in the state
of Maharashtra, it is performed all over India. It is celebrated for
ten days starting from Ganesh Chaturthi. This was introduced by
Balgangadhar Tilak as a means of promoting nationalist sentiment when
India was ruled by the British. This festival is celebrated and it
culminates on the day of Ananta Chaturdashi when the murti of
Lord Ganesha is immersed into the most convenient body of water. In
Bombay the murti is immersed in the Arabian Sea and in Pune the
Mula-Mutha river. In various North and East Indian cities, like
Kolkata, they are immersed in the holy Ganga river.
Representations of Shri Ganesh are
based on thousands of years of religious symbolism that resulted in
the figure of an elephant-head god. In India, the statues are
impressions of symbolic significance and thus have never been claimed
to be exact replications of a living figure. Lord Ganesh is seen not
as a physical entity but a higher spiritual being, and murtis, or
statue-representations, act as signifiers of him as an ideal. Thus, to
refer to the murtis as idols betrays Western Judeo-Christian
understandings of insubstantial object worship, whereas in India,
Hindu deities are seen to be accessed through points of symbolic focus
known as murtis. For this reason, the immersion of the murtis of Lord
Ganesha in nearby holy rivers is undertaken since the murtis are
acknowledged to be only temporal understandings of a higher being as
opposed to being 'idols,' which have traditionally been seen as
objects worshipped for their own sake as divine.
The worship of Ganesha in Japan has
been traced back to 806.
Recently, there has been a resurgence
of Lord Ganesha worship and an increased interest in the "western
world" due to a spate of miracles in september 1995. On september 21,
1995, according to Hinduism Today magazine (www.hinduismtoday.com), as
well as the book Ganesha, Remover of Obstacles by Manuela Dunn
Mascetti, Ganesh statues in India began spontaneously drinking milk
when a spoonful was placed near the mouth of statues honoring the
elephant god. The phenomena spread from New Delhi to New York, Canada,
Mauritius, Kenya, Australia, Bangladesh, Malaysia, the United Kingdom,
Denmark, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Hong Kong, Trinidad, Grenada and Italy
among other reported places. This was seen as a miracle by Hindu and
non-Hindu alike, and a reminder of the God's playfulness and love of
pranks and tricks.
Like other Hindu gods and goddesses,
Ganesh has many other titles of respect or symbolic names, and is
often worshipped through the
chanting of sahasranam (pronounced
saa-HUS-ruh-naam), or a thousand names. Each is different and conveys
a different meaning, representing a different aspect of the god in
question. Needless to say, almost all Hindu gods have one or two
accepted versions of their own sahasranaam liturgy.
Lord Ganesha is also known by other
names:
 | Aumkara, the Aum-shaped body
|
| Ganapati, Lord of the Ganas,
a race of dwarf beings in the army of Shiva |
| Vakratunda, Curved Trunk
|
| Ekadanta, One-Tusked
|
| Shupakarna, Large/Auspicious
Ears |
| Gajanana, elephant face
|
| Anangapujita, The Formless,
or Bodiless |
| Lambodara, big bellied
|
| Vinayaka (knowledgeable)
|
| Vignesh, Vigneshwara
(Vighna = obstacle, eeshwar=lord) |
| Vignaharta, remover of
obstacles |
| Pillaiyar ("whose
child?", Shiva's question in one story of how Ganesh got his head)
|
Information adapted with permission
from Wikipedia. |
