Myth Monday - The Elephant-Headed God

There is already much material on this site on the topic of mythology (especially, Gods and Goddesses and The Stories of the Ancient Greeks). In Myth Mondays I attempt to bring up an element of mythology that is either timely or less well known.

This statue of a gaily painted Ganesha (aka Ganapati, Vinayaka, and Vighnesvara) shows him as human, in body, with an elephant's head with a broken tusk, a pot belly and 4 chubby arms. Typically, "in one hand he holds a shell, in another a discus, in the third a club or goad, and in the fourth a water-lily" [S. M. Michael; reference below]. He didn't become a popular god and figure for statues until the 5th century A.D. Were he riding off somewhere, he would rely on a rat/mouse mode of transport.

Ganesha is a very popular Hindu god of wisdom; possibly, a harvest god, at one time. He is referred to as a god of death, in connection with his rat ("The Sminthian Apollo and the Epidemic among the Achaeans at Troy," by Frederick Bernheim and Ann Adams Zener. Transactions of the American Philological Association, Vol. 108, (1978)). Ganesha may have been a demon.

"Though of a mild and friendly disposition, Ganesha belongs to the stock of Yaksas rather than to that of the higher Devas; he is a popular divinity or demon... who does not appear in the iconography before the Gupta period..."
Ananda Coomaraswamy

"The idea that Ganapati was catastrophe incarnate and a trouble maker is not confined to literary sources. Some of the early sculptural representations of Ganapati depict him as a terrifying demon...."
Michael

Ganesha's help is sought in overcoming difficulties, although he is also associated with having created them. He is invoked first in non-funereal ceremonies.

Two questions face someone looking at Ganesha for the first time: Why does he have a human body/elephant head and why is his tusk broken. There are many answers to these questions. (The last reference below summarizes most of the birth stories.) Here are some which I have selected as representative of the variety:

Ganesha is generally counted the son of Parvati and Siva. In one of the many versions of the life story of Ganesha, Parvati gave a concoction to the elephant-headed ogress Malini to drink. When she did, she gave birth to a child whom Parvati took away.

Another explanation is that Siva and Parvati saw a mating couple of elephants enjoying themselves, so they assumed the animals' shapes and conceived a child while as elephants. The child was born with an elephant head.

Another version of the birth story is that Parvati created a child and sprinkled it with the life-giving water of the Ganges. This version alone doesn't lead to a head, but another element does: When Siva returned he found the man and sliced off his head. Parvati was angry and to appease her, Siva agreed to put on the head of the first animal he saw, which was an elephant.

A story (e.g., Ganesha: Overcomer of Obstacles) of the broken horn is that Ganesha broke it off himself so he could serve as scribe to the first recitation of the Mahabharata, a classic Sanskrit epic poem (and source of the Bhagavad Gita) that is based on an oral tradition and written down sometime between 400 B.C. and A.D. 200.

References

• "Ganesha" Oxford Dictionary of Hinduism. Ed. W. J. Johnson. Oxford University Press, 2009.
• "Ganesha"
  Ananda Coomaraswamy
  Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, Vol. 26, No. 154 (Apr., 1928), pp. 30-31
• The Origin of the Ganapati Cult
  S. M. Michael
  Asian Folklore Studies, Vol. 42, No. 1 (1983), pp. 91-116
• The Origins of Gaṇeśa
  Y. Krishan
  Artibus Asiae, Vol. 43, No. 4 (1981 - 1982), pp. 285-301