The Birth of Ganesha

One day, on Mount Kailash, Parvati wanted to take a bath. She went to the inner room of the cave-palace where the bathing pool was, and she called for an attendant — but Shiva was away in meditation, and his attendants, the ganas, were not the kind who could be trusted to guard a door.

So Parvati did something interesting. She took a handful of yellow turmeric paste from the body-paste she had been preparing, kneaded it, shaped it into the form of a small boy, and breathed life into it.

The boy stood up. He was beautiful — round-faced, bright-eyed, sturdy. He was, the moment he opened his eyes, devoted to Parvati.

“My son,” she said. “I am going to bathe. Stand at the door. Do not let anyone in until I tell you they may come.”

The boy bowed. He took up a small staff and stood at the entrance to the inner room. Parvati went inside to bathe.

A little while later, Shiva came back from his meditation. He went, as he always did when he returned, toward the inner rooms looking for Parvati.

The boy stopped him at the door.

“My mother is bathing,” the boy said. “No one may go in.”

Shiva looked at this small unknown person blocking his path. He had been away. He had not been told there was a boy. He did not know who Parvati’s new “son” was.

“I am her husband,” Shiva said. “I am coming in.”

“My mother said no one,” the boy answered. “That includes you. Wait here.”

Shiva tried to walk past. The boy raised his staff and pushed him back. Pushed Shiva back. The boy did not move from the door.

This was extraordinary. Shiva was the great god. No one stopped him at a door. Even Vishnu would step aside. But this small boy — with no fear and no recognition — held the threshold.

Shiva tried twice more. The boy pushed him back each time.

Shiva’s anger rose. He had spent the morning in deep meditation, and he was being blocked from his own home by a stubborn child he did not even know existed. He summoned his trident.

The boy did not flinch. He raised his staff.

What happened next is the part of the story the Purana does not abbreviate. In the fight that followed, Shiva — using the full force of the lord of all things — struck off the boy’s head.

It rolled away across the floor.

Parvati came out of her bath at exactly that moment.

When she saw her son lying on the ground, her face emptied. Then something else came into it. The Purana says her Shakti — her power — began to rise. The other gods, watching from above, suddenly felt afraid. They knew what was about to happen. Parvati, fully roused, could destroy the worlds.

Shiva understood, too late, what he had done. He had not killed an intruder. He had killed his own wife’s beloved son.

He went to her at once. “Tell me what to do,” he said. “I will restore him. I will fix this.”

“Bring him back,” Parvati said, and her voice was the kind of voice no god wanted to hear from her. “Now.”

Shiva sent his ganas in every direction. “The first creature you find facing north — any creature — bring me its head. Quickly.”

The ganas went out. The first creature they found facing north was a white elephant. They cut off its head and brought it to Shiva.

Shiva placed the elephant’s head on the body of the boy and brought him back to life.

Parvati looked at the elephant-headed boy. Then she looked at her husband.

Shiva said, “From this day, he is my son too. He will be the ganapati — the lord of all the ganas. He will be the first god worshipped before any other rite. No prayer, no marriage, no journey will be undertaken without his blessing. He will be Ganesha — and through every age, all the worlds will love him.”

Parvati accepted this. She embraced her son. The elephant head — far from disturbing her — became, by the end of the same afternoon, the face she loved most.

The next story is what happened between Ganesha and his brother — the brother who had been born separately, six-faced, fierce, named Kartikeya.