Many years ago, I finally found someone I had known for years, but only on the Internet. I discovered that she always donned the same pendant, a strange determination of a man with an elephant’s head, and wondered the reason such an elegant lady could well be so attached to what appeared to be a funny plastic figure. As I finally got around to helping to ask her about it, I became ashamed of my lack of education. It was the first time I had read about the Hindu God Ganesh. To know about om gan gau ganapataye vighna vinashine swaha lyrics, click here.
To a western eye, Ganesh looks strange; a nearly comical figure with a new man’s body (and an abdomen), an elephant’s crown, four hands (at least), only one tusk, and stays his time riding all around on a very small mouse. Although Ganesh is not a clown, to see him as a joke is to misunderstand ages of belief and metaphors.
On the other hand, he is highly revered inside the Hindu religion, where the identical attributes, looked at differently, produce him the embodiment of wisdom and learning, the particular patron of science as well as the arts, the remover regarding obstacles, and hence called in at the beginning of every enterprise because the god of success. It was as such that my friend put on her pendant, not plastic-type but very old jade, any talisman designed to bring accomplishment to each of her projects.
The Hindu religion is quite old and practiced more than a wide area, so it is not surprising that there are many reports about the origin of the Indio gods. In most Hindu cultures, Ganesh is the son of Shiva and his wife, Parvati. Hindus recognize four significant denominations, all of whom consider Parvati and Shiva important, but for the Shakta, Parvati, whose name implies ‘she of the mountains,’ will be the Supreme Being, and Shiva is her consort. So it was Parvati who created Ganesh.
Parvati is said to benefit her privacy, so someday when she wanted to have a bath and had no one around to help keep watch for her, Parvati applied turmeric paste to create a youngster. She gave him existence and asked him to guard her privacy, and this is how Ganesh was given birth to, without any real intervention coming from his ‘father’ Shiva.
When Shiva returned home, he or she wanted to go inside, but Ganesh followed his Mother’s guidelines and stopped him. There is a battle, and Shiva, Lord of Devastation, cuts off the boy’s brain.
Parvati’s tempers knew no bounds when she saw what exactly had happened. The woman demanded that Shiva emend the situation, so he provided his servants to bring back the pinnacle of the first living matter they found. The head was from an elderly elephant they’d found just as he was on the verge of dying, so Ganesh seemed to be brought back to life and presented the elephant’s head.
Using association Ganesh is regarded as robust, affectionate, and loyal. Such a substantial head can only be a warning of wisdom and thinking ability. At the same time, the huge ears are widely used to separate the good and the bad carefully and to listen to the requests of supplicants. Much like the elephant Ganesh is potent if provoked but supportive when shown kindness.
But, contrary to most elephants, Ganesh features only one tusk.
There are many experiences of the reason for the broken tusk; the most popular is that Ganesh was given the job of approaching the epic tale called the Mahabharata. At one particular point, his pen was unsuccessful. Rather than stop, Ganesh removed his tusk and carried on, showing he was ready to make a sacrifice to acquire understanding. Other, less poetic reports say that the tusk has been removed by a villain who also stole it to make pale yellow earrings for beautiful girls.
It’s not immediately noticeable that statues of Ganesh have four (and often more) hands. One is commonly shown in the Abhaya position that is held up with claws out and fingers leading upwards, while the second supports a sweet, a symbol of the inside self. The other hands and fingers usually contain a goad and a noose, the former being used to help prod followers along the course of truth, while the other represents the snare regarding earthly desires. Finally, at his or her feet, most statues regarding Ganesh show a mouse button, his traditional steed. The particular mouse is the symbol of the intellect, wandering in and out yet tamed by the greater strength of the whole.
Many devotees assume that the strange shape of the main one tusked elephant headed The almighty mirrors the symbol AUM, a symbol representing the particular primeval sound that was the first thing to be created and where the rest of the universe arose. So here is the symbol commonly used to symbolize all of Hinduism and its philosophy.
Although the Hindu religion provides four main denominations, just about all worship Ganesh, whose graphic can be found across India, Nepal, and many areas of the Far East.
To get Buddhists, Ganesh appears as being the god Vinayaka and is commonly shown dancing. His sculptures appear in Nepal and Tibet. In Japan, he is seen as a minor god, and the younger generation calls on him when looking for accomplishment in love. Throughout Malaysia, Java, Bali, and Borneo, there are temples to Ganesh. In Thailand, his placement as the remover of obstructions and patron of the disciplines means that there is a ceremony everywhere offerings are made to Ganesh before any movie or Series starts shooting.
Read Also: The Reason Why Positive Discipline?
