A couple of years ago I finally met the person I’d known for many years, but only online. I noticed that this person always donned the same necklace and charm, a strange shape with an elephant’s head. I wondered why such an elegant woman was so enamored with what appeared to be a lighthearted plastic figure. When I finally was able to ask the woman about it, I was embarrassed with my ignorance. It had been the first time I had heard about the Hindu God Ganesh.
To a western eye, Ganesh seems to be genuinely peculiar; a nearly comical figure who’s a male’s body (and a bit of a paunch) an elephant’s head, four arms (at least), just one tusk, and spends his time riding around on a really small mouse. But Ganesh is absolutely not a clown and to see him being a joke would be to misunderstand decades of belief and symbolism. He is highly revered in the Hindu religion, where the identical attributes, looked at in a different way, make him the embodiment of intelligence and learning, the patron of scientific discipline as well as the arts, the remover of road blocks, and therefore summoned at the beginning of every enterprise as the god of success. It turned out as such that this individual donned her pendant, not really plastic but very old jade, a talisman designed to produce success to each of her ventures. Like many other Hindu statues and talismans, a Ganesha statue represents specific aspirations of a productive life.
The Hindu religion is incredibly old and observed over a wide area, so it isn’t surprising that there are a lot of stories about the source of the Hindu gods. Generally in most Hindu customs, Ganesh is the child of Shiva and his wife Parvati. Hindu’s acknowledge four main denominations all of whom regard Parvati and Shiva as significant, but for the Shakta, Parvati, whose name means ’she of the mountains’ is the Supreme Being and Shiva is her consort. It was Parvati who created Ganesh.
Parvati has been said to value her privacy, so one day when she wanted to wash and had no-one around to keep watch for her, Parvati used turmeric paste to produce a boy. The goddess afforded him life and expected him to guard her privacy, and this is the way Ganesh was born, without any real intervention coming from his ‘father’ Shiva.
When Shiva came back home he sought to go inside, yet Ganesh obeyed his Mother’s instructions and stopped him. A battle ensued, and Shiva, who is Lord of Destruction, chopped off the boy’s head.
When she discovered what had happened, Parvati’s fury knew no bounds. She commanded that Shiva amend the situation, so he sent his servants to bring back the head from the first living thing they found. The head belonged to an elderly elephant they’d found just as he was about to perish, so Ganesh was brought back to life and given the elephant’s head.
By association Ganesh is considered potent, caring and loyal. A very massive head can only be a signal of knowledge and cleverness, while the enormous ears are employed to carefully distinguish the good and the bad and to listen to the requests of supplicants. Like the elephant Ganesh is dangerous if provoked, but caring when shown kindness. Unlike most elephants, Ganesh has just one tusk.
There are numerous tales of the explanation for the damaged tusk; the most common is Ganesh was handed the job of writing down the legendary account known as the Mahabharata. At some point his pen failed and rather then stopping, Ganesh detached his tusk and carried on, showing he was prepared to make a sacrifice to acquire knowledge. Other, less poetic stories state that the tusk was removed by a villain who stole it to create ivory earrings for attractive women.
It’s not always immediately clear that a Ganesh statue has four (and sometimes more) hands. Some may be shown in abhaya pose that’s held up with hand out and fingers directed upwards, as the second holds a sweet, a symbol of the interior self. The other two hands will usually contain a goad and a noose, the former used to prod followers along the way of truth, while the latter represents the snare of earthly desires. At his feet most statues of Ganesh show a mouse, his classic steed. The mouse is the symbol of the intellect, roaming in and out, but tamed by the greater power of the whole.
A number of devotees believe the odd shape of the one tusked elephant headed God mirrors the symbol AUM, a symbol that signifies the primeval sound that was the very first thing to be created and from which all the world arose. This is the symbol which is commonly used to symbolize all of Hinduism and its beliefs.
Even though the Hindu religion has 4 primary denominations, all worship Ganesh, whose representation can be found across India, Nepal and many areas of the Far East. For Buddhists Ganesh appears as the god Vinayaka and is normally displayed dancing. His statues appear in Nepal and Tibet. In Japan he is seen as a minor god and young people call on him when searching for success in love. Throughout Malaysia, Java, Bali and Borneo there are temples to Ganesh and in Thailand. There his position as remover of obstacles and patron of the arts mean that there’s a ceremony where offerings are made to Ganesh before any movie or TV series starts shooting.
Indonesia is a Muslim country, however even there Ganesh is adored and his image can be found in many Cambodian temples. Yet despite spreading throughout the Eastern world Ganesh was not known in Europe until fairly recently, though some scholars, commenting on a statue of Ganesh where he’s shown with two heads (one of an elephant one of a man) facing in opposite directions have compared the image to that of Janus, the two headed God of the Romans, but no actual link between the two has been discovered.
Whatever your own view on the gods from the east or of the ancients, their sculpture and associated symbolism will always be thought provoking. However we look at something, other cultures often saw it very differently; one reason museum quality statues along with other artifacts make fascinating and artistic conversation pieces for any home.
Posted by admin on April 30th, 2010 :: Filed under
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