Embedded Files
Our first story starts at the court of the God Indra where there was a skilled singer named Krouncha. Krouncha was a very arrogant man who had a very big ego. One day Krouncha ran into a sage at the court and started to laugh and make fun of him. The sage became enraged and cursed Krouncha, “Krouncha, you are a man with a big ego. I will curse you so that in your next life you will be turned into a mouse and hopefully you will be humbled.”
Soon after this Krouncha died and was indeed reincarnated into a mouse. When he was reborn as a mouse he was born near the dwelling of the sage Parashara. Gajanana, one of Ganesha’s incarnations, was the son of Parashara and as such lived there. The mouse, as all mice were, was very annoying and started to eat all the food. So Parashara called for his son and said, “Gajanana, my son there is a mouse loose in the building and he is eating all the food. Could you please get rid of this nuisance?”
Gajanana said, “Of course, father, I will get rid of this troublesome mouse.” And so Gajanana went on the looking for the mouse. Finally, he came across the mouse and caught him.
Krouncha begged, “Gajanana, please do not harm me. I will grant you a boon instead if you spare me.”
Gajanana responded, “I do not seek a boon. Instead I shall take ride on your back and we shall travel wherever you desire.” And so Gajanana transformed into Lord Ganesha and then he condensed his weight and sat on Krouncha’s back. From this day forward Krouncha became the vehicle of Ganesha.
The second story starts one day when the sage Vyasa asked, “Ganesha, could you transcribe my poem for me?”
Ganesha replied, “Of course I will. But you must tell the story to me in this one sitting, no interruptions.”
Vyasa replied, “Okay, we shall do this in one sitting, but you must understand everything I tell you before you can write it down.” Ganesha agreed to this request and they immediately sat down and started transcribing. However, Ganesha learned quickly that the sage’s pace was faster than he expected and when they got to a particularly complicated verse that Ganesha had trouble understanding, he could not keep up the pace and started to fall behind. After he finally understood the passage, he sped up his writing pace, but in his haste to catch up he ended up breaking his pen.
Ganesha said, “Oh no, what shall I do now that my pen is broken? I must not interrupt the transcribing.” And then Ganesha came up with an idea. He broke off his own tusk to use as a pen and continued to transcribe for the sage. Once it was all said and done Vyasa thanked Ganesha for transcribing for him and left. This is how the epic poem the Mahabharata was put down in writing.
Author's Note:
I chose to do these two stories for this storybook edition because both Ganesha’s tusk and his mouse have similar meanings behind their stories. The tusks' meaning is that one must control their emotions with wisdom, and the mouse’s meaning is that one should control their ego or desire. Both these stories have the control of one’s emotions as the main meaning in the end. So I chose to put both these stories on this one storybook page. For the story of how the mouse became Ganesha’s vehicle all stories seem to be the same so I chose to just stay close to the original. For how Ganesha’s tusk got broken off there seem to be three main different stories that people tell. One is the one I told, the second is one where Vishnu hurled an axe at Ganesha, and the third one is where he fell off his mouse and the tusk broke off. I chose to stick with the one I did because first of all it’s the way I’ve heard it and the one I’ve heard most often. The second reason I chose to do this one is because it relates to one the class reading, the Mahabharata.
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