Ganesha

Here is my version of Ganesha (or Ganapati, or Vinayaka ...), the Hindu god/deva of wisdom, intelligence, education and prudence, who removes obstacles. He is the son of Shiva, the ascetic destroyer and renewer, and of Parvati, the goddess symbolizing the devoted wife and mother. He also has three wives: Siddhi (Success), Buddhi (Intellect), and Riddhi (Wealth). Although not the most powerful deity in his pantheon, he is arguably the most revered in India, and even has avatars in other Asian mythologies, such as Kangiten, the god of joy and obstacles of Japanese Buddhism.

The best-known legend about his birth says that Ganesha was originally created by Parvati from dust and ointments scraped from her skin, to keep her company as she lived through a long period of loneliness, her husband Shiva having gone to meditate in the Himalayas. The god was created with a human head, like his mother, and stood guard in front of her home. On Shiva's return, Ganesha, never having seen him, blocked his way. Furious, the ascetic beheaded the young god, and his head rolled away, to the point of becoming untraceable. Inconsolable, Parvati told her husband everything, and ordered him to resuscitate her son. Shiva promised to replace his head with that of the first juvenile creature he would find out of his mother's sight. The deva then came across an elephant cub that his sleeping mother was not watching, beheaded him, and gave life to Ganesh by placing this new head on his shoulders, thus recognizing his role as his father.

His most recurring attributes are: the ax/parashu inherited from Shiva, which cuts the bonds of attachment and desire (and thereby destroys restlessness and sorrow), the lotus, symbol of the divine and immortality, the noose/pasha, which captures and releases obstacles, and the bowl of treats/modaka, the reward of the seeker of truth. Like most devas, Ganesha has his own mount/vahana, in this case Mushika, a rat who, by his smallness, mobility and malice, is complementary to his massive, powerful and thoughtful rider.

Regarding his broken tusk, there are again different explanations. But the best-known story on this subject says that it was Ganesha himself who broke one of his tusks to use it as a stylus, in order to write the Vedas (the founding texts of Vedism, the ancestor of modern Hinduism, which at least dates from the 15th century BC) or the Mahabharata (a long epic poem founder of Hinduism, whose writing would have started under Vedism and would have continued until the 6th century AD) under the dictation of sage Vyasa. We could therefore compare Ganesha to the Thoth of ancient Egypt, in his function of scribe and god associated with intelligence, wisdom and education.