How Ganesha got His elephant head
Any undertaking for me is always begun with a prayer to
Pilliar aka Ganesha, Ganapati, Gajanana .I thought it would be appropriate to
begin this blog with an invocation to Ganesha my favourite God in the form of
an article.
That Ganesha has an elephant head - we all know .The elephant represents
wisdom , strength , a phenomenal memory ( is unforgiving of wanton
misdeeds) , its huge ears remind us that we need to listen more , it is
vegetarian and a very benign creature .
But how did Ganesha get an elephant’s head? There are many
different stories about the birth of Ganesha which throw light on this.
According to one He is the maanasika putra (mind- born) son
of Shiva and was created by Shiva in response to a plea by the Devas to protect
them as they were harassed by the demons. When Parvathi discovered that this
lovely boy was born without her involvement, she willed that the boy’s head
should be turned into an elephant’s head .However her love for the boy was so
great that she declared that no undertaking by anyone would succeed unless
Ganesha is propitiated first.
In another oft told story he was created by Parvathi out of
the scrapings of the paste she had used to anoint herself before her bath after
How which she breathed life into Him .Ganesha was told to guard the entrance
while his mother went in for her bath. The little boy took his job very seriously and did not even
allow Lord Shiva to enter .In the tussle that followed Lord Shiva in a fit of rage cut off the little boy’s
head ( or to put it mildly the boy’s head
got severed from his body) When Parvathi returned from her bath she was furious and vowed to destroy the heavens and the
earth .Shiva somehow tried to pacify her
and sent out his ganas to bring the head of the first living creature they found sleeping with its head facing north .They happened to find an elephant in
this position and brought its head which Shiva placed on the boy and breathed
life into him.
There is yet another legend that tells us of Parvathi’s
longing for a child and the severe penance she undertook for a year and all the
tests she faced to prove the strength of her vow. At the end of it all she
heard a divine voice telling her to look for her new born son in the chambers
.All the Gods and Goddesses too rushed to Mount Kailas as did the nine planets
.Lord Saturn refused to look at the child because of a curse from his wife that
anyone who was the object of his gaze would be destroyed. The proud mother that
Parvathi was she urged Shani Bhagwan (
Lord Saturn ) to look at the newborn and
lo and behold the head of the child got
separated and flew into space .Lord Vishnu
who saw what happened went looking for a
head and found a herd of elephants sleeping by a river and brought the head of the one elephant- a
celestial being who was waiting to be released from earthly life and the little boy came to life.
We also read in some versions that the elephant was actually
Airavata – Indra’s elephant.
Elephants are said to have been born from the cosmic egg or
hiranyagarbha out of which the sun emerged .Brahma breathed life into the two
halves of the broken egg .Airavata and
eight male elephants came from one half and eight female elephants from the
other half. There are many more stories about Ganesha which I shall save for
later
Sudha Umashanker
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