Topic Research

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Ganesha is a god that is well known for his elephant head. His parents are Parvati and Shiva. Shiva is the god of war and Parvati is goddess of love and fertility. There are many different stories regarding the creation of Ganesha.

 One of the stories was that Ganesha got his elephant head when Shiva cut his head off. You might wonder why his own father would cut his head off. Well according to this creation story, Ancient History, Parvati created Ganesha from the earth. This boy was to protect this mother while his father was gone. Due to his absence, Shiva did not know that he had another son so when he saw a boy in front of his wife’s bathroom who would not let him in, he sent demons to fight Ganesha. When that failed, Shiva went and cut the head off the boy himself. Parvati freaked out and had Shiva find Ganesha a head. The closest animal around was an elephant which is why Ganesha is always depicted with an elephant head. Another story of how Ganesha got his elephant head was because of Shani according to Ved Sutra. Shiva and Parvati were happy about having a child so they invited other gods to bless their baby, Ganesha. Shani was cursed with the Gaze of Destruction. Shiva and Parvati insisted that Shani look at their newborn, so he ended up obliterating Ganesha's head off. Lord Vishnu seeing the whole thing, worked quickly. He found an elephant head, put it on Ganesha's body, and brought him back to life. There are some sources that say that he was just born with a elephant head.

 Even with his elephant tusk, there are different stories of why he has one broken tusk. According to India Today when Ganesha was writing the epic poem Mahabharata with a feather pen, the feather pen broke. Therefore he broke off his tusk to keep on writing. In another story from Brahmanda Purdna, Ganesha's tusk was broken from Parashurama. Parashurama wanted to see Shiva, but Shiva and Parvati were sleeping. Therefore Ganesha blocked Parashurama from entering and they ended up fighting. Parashurama wielded an axe that was a gift from Shiva. Therefore when Parashurama threw the axe at Ganesha, Ganesha did not dodge it which is why one of his tufts are broken. 



(Picture of Ganesha Flickr)

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