As with other Indian children, stories of the elephant-headed god Ganesha were part of mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik’s growing-up years as well. One tale in particular always struck him as funny — that of Ganesha tying a snake around his stomach after eating a rather hearty meal, as a belt, to ‘hold in’ the food.
The story made an impact on Devdutt because it was so contrary: We humans would loosen our belts if we’d eaten too much, Ganesha did the exact opposite. But in this, just like with every other gesture or symbol associated with him — the elephant head, the broken tusk, the choice of a rat as his vaahan — Ganesha was expressing a deeper, meaningful message.
Ganesha is among the gods we know the most stories of — and yet, the one we understand so little about. We’re content, for the most part, to accept what we know of him blindly, without questioning it too much. Which is a pity, because Ganesha has so much to teach us.
Devdutt Pattanaik says the images of Ganesha, and the stories/rituals created around him, are a kind of “mythological puzzle”, used by our ancestors to pass on certain truths and wisdom. In his book 99 Thoughts on Ganesha, Pattanaik explains how our ancestors’ ideas of the ‘perfect life’ are reflected in Ganesha’s unique physiology: “Our ancestors concluded that there are two ways to live life — as a hermit who steps back and contemplates on the nature of the world; and as a householder, who stays in the world and experiences it fearlessly.
They visualised the hermit as Shiva… and the householder as Shakti. Shiva does not want to be a father and to deal with the trials and tribulations of a worldly life. Shakti wants to be a mother and engage with all things worldly, but she knows she cannot do so without Shiva’s support and participation. From this tension between the hermit and the householder, is born Ganesha — his animal head representing material joys and his human body representing spiritual bliss.”
There simply isn’t enough appreciation for the “history/ geography of Ganesha and his symbols and metaphors”, Pattanaik tells us. “Concepts cannot be explained literally. You need metaphors in literature, and symbols in visuals. The more metaphors a human mind grasps, the more complex concepts it can handle. Ganesha can be seen as a visual code through which a part of Vedic wisdom is made easily accessible to the devotee. You can focus on the literal or appreciate the deeper meaning.”
The most fundamental of stories about Ganesha — how he got his elephant head — is in itself a metaphor with a significant teaching. One version of this story holds that Shiva destroyed an elephant-demon called Gajantaka and then used his head to resurrect Shakti’s son (whose head he had cut off in a fit of anger). Here, Ganesha’s human body and animal head serve as a reminder that we have the ability to overpower the beast within us.
Of course, this isn’t the only version of how Ganesha got his head. Writer Amy Novesky has explored quite a different version of Ganesha’s origin in her book for young readers, The Elephant Prince. Delving into the Brahma Vaivarta Purana, Amy narrates a story in which Shani accidentally destroys Ganesha’s head when he looks at Parvati’s son (as anything Shani looks at turns to ash). It is Vishnu who then brings the child back to life, with the help of a wise old elephant who sacrifices himself for Parvati’s son’s sake.
“When I started my research of Ganesha, the most common story about why he had the head of an elephant was that his father cut it off in a fit of rage,” she says. “I felt it might not work in a children’s book, or at least one that I felt comfortable authoring. When I found the tale of the planet Saturn shyly looking upon newborn Ganesha’s head and turning it to ash, I knew I’d found the story I wanted to retell. It took the adult complexities out of (the story) and felt more poetic, more ethereal… I (also) loved that it involved the sun and the moon, the stars and the planets, very universal and naturally magical elements.”
For Ganesha’s broken tusk too, there are several explanations. The tusks of an elephant symbolise power and aggression; the broken tusk implies that the elephant has been tamed, made a little less wild. The Puranas offer different accounts of how this happened — that Ganesha broke his tusk himself, that his brother Kartikeya was responsible, that it was broken during a duel with either Parshurama or Balarama. The purposes of this broken tusk too are many — the most popular story about it being Ganesha's use of it as a replacement for his quill while writing down the Mahabharata for sage Vyas.
The writer Uma Krishnaswami has presented 17 stories about Ganesha in her book The Broken Tusk. Explaining how a multiplicity of stories try to account for the different aspects of Ganesha’s origin and physiology, Uma says, “Folklorists refer to such tales as origin tales or pourquoi stories —they are narratives (about) the origin of things both real and fantastic. For instance, why the Indian squirrel has stripes or why the moon has phases. These are explanations of natural phenomena. Explanations for mythic reality are similar. There are many versions, because people tell these stories across a wide geographical region so of course the stories vary — much the way that recipes and foods vary from state to state. It’s how we think as human beings.”
Ganesha’s stories have travelled far and wide indeed. Both Uma Krishnaswami and Devdutt Pattanaik have written about the presence of the elephant-headed god in places like Tibet, Mongolia, Japan, Thailand etc. “Ganesha/Ganpati images have been found in China and Tibet, Mongolia. They are rare, but they do exist,” says Uma. “There’s a statue from China in the Cleveland Museum, seated, with arms outstretched, and another figure holding up his throne.
Ancient people travelled quite far from home. Perhaps they didn’t move around as fast as we can now, and in such great numbers, but they did travel, and they took their ideas and beliefs with them. So it’s not that surprising. In Tibet and China, as well as in Japan, Ganesha images are sometimes shown carrying a radish in one hand and an axe in the other, rather than the tusk and the modak we come to expect in India.”
And as the places his stories travelled to have changed how Ganesha was depicted — so also has time. Says Devdutt Pattanaik, “I think in contemporary times, a lot of Ganesha’s appeal comes from his popularity via the freedom movement — Tilak’s introduction of public worship of the god — and via Bollywood (Ganesha is a favourite god and good luck charm of the film community in Mumbai). There is something positive and joyful about the image, associated with all things modern man wants — affluence, abundance, prosperity. And there is not too much intellectualisation, which is a relief for most people who value rituals and devotion over introspection. What’s fascinating is how artists even today interpret and re-interpret him. Nowadays, I find images of Ganesha with six-pack abs. Once upon a time, the tummy was aspirational. Now muscles are!”
