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A person’s image is everything. This saying is certainly true for gods. Although, with gods that is, images seem to have a deeper meaning than most of the images of us mere humans. So I will take this opportunity to go into depth about the image of the remover of obstacles, Ganesha, and show how his image is a symbolic representation of everything he stands for.
Our first story starts with Kuber, the god of wealth, who was a devotee of Shiva. One day he noticed that Shiva’s son, Ganesha, was fat and loved to eat lots of food especially sweets. He thought he could help to satiate Ganesha’s appetite. So one day he went to Ganesha and said, “I will feed you any kind of food you could ever want.”
Ganesha assessed Kuber and then asked, “How much food will you give me?”
Kuber replied, “As much as your heart desires.”
So Ganesha went over to Kuber’s house the next day and sat down to eat. He ate until the Kuber’s kitchen had run out of food. The cook went to Kuber and said, “We have run out of food. What should we do?”
Kuber was shocked that they had run out of food so fast but then said to the cook, “Go and buy more food to feed him.” So the cook went and purchased more food and then fed Ganesha until that food supply was to depleted. This cycle kept repeating until Kuber noticed all his wealth had disappeared. Finally, Kuber realized his mistake. He was too arrogant and believed that his wealth could feed God. His wealth was not infinite like God. Once he realized that Ganesha had done this to teach him a lesson he quickly fell at Ganesha’s feet and said, “Oh Ganesha, I have been arrogant. Could you forgive an arrogant man like me?”
Ganesha replied, “Of course I can. Now get up and I will give you your wealth, but never let your wealth blind you again.”
Most of the Hindu gods have a slimmer and more muscular figure, but Ganesha is the exception to this. Ganesha has a pot belly. The reason put forth for this is body type can be found of all over the world throughout history, and that is the indication of wealth that was gained with the least amount of work. However, as Kuber learned in this story, wealth is not infinite while God is. So even though there is much prosperity to be gained from God never be too arrogant and think wealth is more important. Since Ganesha is a god that represents prosperity it seems perfectly reasonable to give him a pot belly for this reason.
The second story starts on a peaceful moonlit night. On this night Ganesha was returning home from a party. As always he was riding his trusty steed, Krouncha, their ride this night was taking a little longer than usual. So Ganesha asked, “Krouncha, what is taking so long?”
The mouse replied, “Sorry, my lord, but if you wanted me to go as fast I usually do you should not have given into temptation and eaten so many laddus.” Ganesha scoffed at this remark and the two started bickering. They were so distracted that they did not notice the snake that had crawled into their path. This startled both of them and Ganesha fell off of Krouncha. When he fell off of Krouncha his stomach burst open and all the laddus he had eaten that night fell out. Ganesha, embarrassed, quickly shoved all the laddus back into his stomach and grabbed the snake and wrapped it around himself to keep them in. Then out of nowhere Ganesha heard a laugh. He looked around and then eventually he looked up and there he saw the moon laughing at him.
The moon laughed and said, “I have never seen such an amusing sight in my life. A fat man with a huge elephant head falling off of his mouse steed and all the food falling out of his stomach. Ha!”
Ganesha immediately became angry and then cursed the moon, “You dare to laugh at me. You shall never be whole again.” And so Ganesha threw a pointy stick he found on the side of the road at the moon.
This is how the moon got its crater, and it is also why sometimes in images Ganesha has a snake around his stomach. It also why during Ganesha Chaturthi it is considered unlucky to look at the moon. Ganesha’s favorite food is the laddu, an Indian sweet, which has become known as a symbol of prosperity and a symbol of the sweet desires that this prosperity can provide. A bowl of laddu's is seen in many images of Ganesha.
Author’s Note:
I took this opportunity to write about how all these iconographies reflected on Ganesha’s image and also how they were a representation of the traits Ganesha stands for. I feel like this is something that is very important to talk about because oftentimes Gods are a reflection of human emotions and humans use Gods to lead as examples of what one should and should not do. So understanding the image of Ganesha helps people to understand what they should and should not do in life. It is also meant, in Ganesha’s case, to help them succeed in life. I stuck pretty close to the original stories, although I changed the second one a little bit. For example, the original story for the second one said that Ganesha’s preferred sweets are modakas. In all of Ganesha’s stories he either like modakas or laddus. I have always grown up hearing about him liking laddus, and that has been what I have been writing in my stories in this storybook so I thought I would keep it consistent and have him prefer laddus in here. Also in the original story Ganesha breaks off his tusk and throws it at the moon, but in my story I said he threw a stick at the moon instead. I did this because in one of my earlier stories I had already written a different version of how Ganesha broken his tusk so I decided to keep things more simple and consistent by replacing the tusk with a stick in this story.
Bibliography: Ganesha
99 Thoughts on Ganesha by Devdutt Pattanaik
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