Ganapati - Birth Part 2

The Myth of Gajasura

A very interesting myth exists about Ganesha’s elephant head – the myth of the demon Gajasura.

As the myth goes, Gajasura – elephant headed demon was doing a very strict penance to seek blessing from Lord Shiva. Shiva granted him a boon as his satisfaction from the penance. Gajasura, asked that he be able to emanate fire from his body, so that nobody could dare come near him. Shiva granted the wish.

Gajasura continued his penance and Shiva would occasionally come and grant him his wishes. Finally Gajasura asked that Shiva inhabit his stomach and quite obviously Shiva granted the wish without thinking of the consequences. Soon Shiva was missing from his abode and Parvati was getting restless with the absence. Parvati then approached Lord Vishnu for help.

Lord Vishnu figured out soon regarding the whereabouts of Lord Shiva. He then devised a plan and took the form of a flautist and got Shiva’s Nandi bull to become a dancing bull. Together they performed in front of Gajasura who was so impressed by the performance that he granted a wish to the flautist – “anything you desire”. Lord Vishnu immediately asked for the release of Shiva.

Gajasura immediately saw thru the charade, but released Lord Shiva as promised. However, he asked for one last wish from Shiva. He said that he would want people to love him and his head should be remembered for ever after his death. Lord Shiva then got his son Ganesha there and substituted his head with that of Gajasura. This was one last gift by Shiva to Gajasura.

Ganesh – Marriage

There seem to be different versions of Lord Ganesha’s family. Was he married, and if so who were his wives? Let’s see the details of his wives and his family.

Popular myth says, that Lord Ganesha was married to two daughters of Prajapati, Siddhi (wealth) and Buddhi (wisdom). This could be symbolic of the fact that propitiating the Lord could help mortals attain both wisdom and wealth. Amongst the pantheon, goddess Lakshmi is associated with wealth and goddess Saraswati is associated with wisdom (learning), but then some myths say that both were Ganesha’s sisters! Coming back to Siddhi and Buddhi, his wives, both give birth to two sons – Shubh (auspiciousness) of Siddhi and Labh (merit) of Buddhi.

In some temples in North, his two wives are referred to as Riddhi (prosperity) and Siddhi, however, there are no significant textual references of Riddhi available.

Another popular myth says that Santoshi Ma (goddess of satisfaction), was Ganesha’s daughter. Again no textual references have been made available except the famous movie by the name of ‘Jai Santoshi Ma’.

A very famous representation by Raja Ravi Verma, shows Lord Ganesha with Ashtasiddhi, representing the eight spiritual attainments obtained by the practice of Yoga. According to Ganesha Purana, these Ashtasiddhis are personified to attack the demon Devantaka. Sometimes all of them are united as a single shakti of Ganesha.

In South a popular myth says that Ganesha was a celibate due to a curse by his mother Parvati. According to the myth, Ganesha was asked as to what kind of woman would he like to have for a wife. His response was a woman like his mother (like a true Indian son!). He is supposed to have said - "Bring me a woman as beautiful as she and I will marry her." This is supposed to have angered Parvati as she felt that he was seeing his mother in a manner inappropriate for a son (does this smack of a reference to the Greek Oedipus Complex?), and thus curses him to be a celibate for life. Some other references say that he was a celibate as he wanted to pursue the path of spiritual wisdom. He is thus also referred to as Abhiru, meaning “without a woman”.

In Bengal, during the Durga Puja, Ganesha is worshipped along with a banana tree (kala bou) as his consort. Not much is available in terms of details of the origin of the banana tree as a consort, except that it could be his association with vegetation as he is also seen as a harvest deity. But on a lighter note, one can also associate the banana tree with an elephants love for bananas!

Ganapati – Birth

The birth of Ganapati has its own myths. However there seem to be quite a few of them in the texts.

The most common one was that of Parvati giving birth to Ganesha all by herself, i.e. with the help of Shiva (thus also referred to as Vinayaka – ‘vina’ i.e. without; ‘nayaka’ i.e. male principle). Once Parvati wanted to go for a bath and so she created a child from her ‘ubtan’, i.e. turmeric paste (and thus Ganesha is also referred to as Dhûmravarna, "the Lord with a tawny colour") with instructions not to allow anybody inside the house. As luck would have it, Shiva returned from somewhere and Ganesha stopped him, unknown to him that Shiva was his father (though not biological). To cut short the whole story, a battle ensued between the two and Ganesh was beheaded by Shiva. Later, on realising the mistake, an elephant’s head was attached to the body of the child Ganesha. This is the most common and well-accepted myth from Shiva Purana.

Staying on with Parvati, another myth says that once the used bath-water of Parvati was thrown into the river Ganga, which in turn was drunk by the elephant-headed Goddess Malini. In due course of time, she gave birth to a baby with four hands and five elephant heads. Goddess Malini claimed the child to be hers, but Siva declared the child to be Parvati’s. Shiva then reduced the five heads to one and thus was born the elephant-headed god.

Still another myth says that once Shiva had slain Aditya, a son of Sage Kashyapa. Though Shiva restored the dead son, it did not pacify the sage who cursed him that his son would lose his head too. When this happened with Ganesha later, the head of Indra’s elephant was used to stick to the body of the child.

A lesser known myth says that a child was born to Parvati after a long tapa, penance. All the gods were invited by Shiva and Parvati to see and bless the child. All gods blessed the child except Shani dev. He did not want to look at the child as his gaze could harm the infant. But Parvati insisted that he see the child. But as is known, Shani’s gaze was so severe, that one look at the child and the child’s head gets severed. Lord Vishnu immediately mounted Garuda and flew to the Pushpa-Bhadra river and got the head of a young elephant and joined it with the body of the child Ganesha. This myth, though lesser known, is documented in Brahma Vaivarta Purana.

Ganapati Festival

The 10-day Ganapati Festival starts across Maharashtra from today. Though Ganapati was predominantly a Harvest deity, and also a household deity, it took the form of ‘sarvajanik utsav’ (community celebrations), due to the efforts taken by Bal Gangadhar Tilak as a part of the freedom movement.

Tilak was a Maharashtrian Brahmin and was an active member of the Freedom movement as believed in the concept of self rule. One of his contributions was to invoke religious sentiments through religious celebrations. The Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations initiated by Tilak got the sense of unity amongst the Hindus in Maharashtra and more important gave an opportunity for the freedom fighters to meet and discuss, as the British had illegalised such gatherings as they could incite violence.

Though the concept and the rationale of such celebrations have seen sea-changes from Tilak’s vision, and the celebrations today are both big in proportions and money. Over the next 10 days we will see some facets of Ganapati which is a cult and also see some popular and not-so-popular myths centred on the great god, who has numerous names.

Why as a family, we must watch the ‘Saas-Bahu’ serials on TV.

I personally am of the opinion that the prime time ‘saas-bahu’ serials must be watched by each and every member of the family and that too together. Sceptics please don’t look aghast! I can give you many benefits of watching these serials.
The following are just a few of them:

Benefits for women
1. Women can learn the art of looking younger as times progress in leaps of 20 years – (all you need is a new hairdo and a change of wardrobe)
2. The saas-brigade can learn the art of looking younger than their bahus (sometimes in spite of a dash of grey on the head)
3. Housewives can learn the art of succeeding in the corporate world, without even going to the workplace or by just attending a couple of meetings (so what if they have lasted less than a few minutes)
4. Women can get a rare insight in the new designs of jewellery (where chandeliers are passed off as ear-rings)
5. They can learn to make ‘rangolis’ on their foreheads which can be passed off as ‘bindis’ (Mr. Hussain – your canvas just got smaller!)
6. They can learn the art of working in the kitchen with the best of designer wear and perfect make-up (not to mention the matching stilettos)
7. The art of finishing small work while the husband is catching up on prime-time news (where the poor man is allowed nothing more than the headlines)

Benefits for children
1. In times of dwindling family sizes our children get to know what joint families are/were (so what if they conclude that they never want to be a part of the organised chaos)
2. Our children learn what a Chacha or a chachi is (so what if they are all wicked and scheming)
3. Our children will grow up much faster than what they should because they get to learn a lot from these serials (bad relationships, broken families, scheming relatives, extra-marital affairs, pre-marital sex, what-have-you?)
4. Our children are much better prepared for the intricacies of family life because the serials have exposed them to all such cases (however impractical and improbable many of them may be)

Benefits for the family as a whole
1. The family can learn the art of talking less, precise and to the point (during the breaks and before the next scene begins)
2. Working with a clock-like precision with house-hold chores happening robot-like (especially between 8pm and 10pm)
3. The family can learn the art of getting shocked on hearing a bad news one by one (in accordance to ones hierarchy in the family)
4. The art of wearing crisp and ready-to-go-out clothes all the time (even if you are going nowhere)

Before you think that men folk have nothing to learn from the serials, here are the benefits for men:

1. They can learn the art of getting promoted to the post of an MD of a large corporation (from a nobody a few episodes back)
2. They can learn how to age, again in leaps of 20 years, with grace, just grey hair and no paunch or wrinkles (wrinkle-free creams – Quit India)
3. The art of handling growing children who have never been to college (but suddenly leave for abroad to do their MBA)
4. The art of handling problems of the new-generation children – wayward sons with pierced body parts and tattooed to scare, daughters who are on their way to become un-wed mothers, obnoxious mannerisms picked up from the backstreets of New York or LA (though they wouldn’t have crossed the borders of Mumbai)
5. How to afford big cars for your children (irrespective of your means of livelihood)

Aren’t these good enough reasons to watch these serials all together as a family, especially during meal times? Some bright fellow has said – a family that eats together, stays together. Well we are eating – he didn’t mention anything about talking – did he????