GANESHA

also spelled Ganesh, also called Ganapati elephant-headed Hindu god, the son of Shiva and Parvati. He is also revered by Jains and important in the art, myth, and ritual of Buddhist Asia. Ganesha, considered the remover of obstacles, is the first god invoked at the beginning of worship or of a new enterprise, and he is often positioned near thresholds and gateways. He is a patron of letters and learning, and he is the legendary scribe who wrote down the Mahabharata (Great Epic of the Bharata Dynasty) from Vyasa's dictation. He is also called the chief of the ganas (attendants of Shiva). Ganesha is usually depicted coloured red; he is potbellied, has one tusk broken, and has four arms that may hold a noose, a goad or an axe, a pot of sweetmeats or jewels, and his broken tusk or a book. Thus, he displays a thoroughgoing mix of forbidding and welcoming traits, as is illustrated by the fact that he is sometimes thought of as creating obstacles and sometimes as removing them. Anomalously, he rides on a rat. One account of his birth is that Parvati formed him from the rubbings of her body so that he might stand guard at the door while she bathed. When Shiva approached (unaware that this was Parvati's son), he was enraged at being kept away from his wife and set his attendants against Ganesha, whose head was cut off in the battle. To ease Parvati's grief, Shiva promised to cut off the head of the first creature that he came across and join it to the body. This was an elephant. Although technically a subsidiary figure in the Hindu pantheon, Ganesha's importance has advanced markedly during the 20th century. Ganesha-chaturthi, the festival celebrating his birth, falling on the fourth day (chaturthi) of the lunar month Bhadrapada (AugustSeptember), was championed by the Indian independence leader Balgangadhar Tilak as a unifying public event. Ganesha's largely nonsectarian identity has made him an appropriate focus for other recent expressions of Hindu life, especially in the Hindu diaspora.