DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.75620#0021
INTRODUCTION
NEED we be surprised if Ganesa, God of Success, achieved for himself a truly
remarkable career ? As the reader will gather from the present work, his striking
figure won all the Eastern countries in turn. His presentation to the European
and American publics was all that was required to make him known throughout
the world, and every one will agree that for the last step he could not have chosen
better sponsors than the author of The Gods of Northern Buddhism and the Clarendon
Press.
Blinking his cunning little eyes on either side of his huge trunk, he can boast,
with a certain feeling of gratification, that in spite of his uncouth looks, or perhaps
because of them, he is now universally accepted; and this must be all the more
flattering to his self-esteem, since—as he himself is quite aware—his humble origins
are evident to every one. A mere glance at him shows that he still bears unquestion-
able signs of his modest lineage. Even if we ignore for the moment his ungainly
elephant's head, yet his short arms, the bulging girth overhanging his stunted legs,
are enough to place him at once in the class to which he belongs. Obviously, Ganesa
is linked with those stout, thickset goblins with which the earliest sculptures of
ancient India have made us familiar, and that appear so often in the texts, now as
the imps of Mara, the Buddhist Satan, now as the yaksas of Kubera, God of Wealth,
now as the raksasas of Kubera's brother, Havana, and sometimes as the ganas of the
'King of the Mountains', Siva. For sheer antiquity their race can hold its own.
Those grotesque dwarfs spring from a family which can be traced, since time began,
from one end of the old continent to the other. By their misshapen bodies, their
guardianship of treasure hoards, and by their freakish and too often evil characters,
the gnomes of India (known under the various names already mentioned and many
more besides, such as kumbhanda, pisaca, vetdla, &c.) are unquestionably the cousins,
morally and physically, of the Scandinavian trolls, the Celtic korrigans, the Anglo-
Saxon goblins, the German kobolds, the Thraco-Phrygian Kabiri, not to mention
the Arabian jinn. Even to-day we find them deeply rooted in our countryside,
disporting themselves on moors, in woods, and in caves ; but venerable die-hards as
they are, those spirits occupy the lowest rung in the hierarchic ladder. Ganesa,
as his name implies, rose to the rank of chieftain (isa) ; yet in attaining the dignity
of 'Lord of the Hordes', his appearance remained like that of his followers, the
ganas.
In this respect he was not so fortunate as the other 'army-leaders' who form the
'General Staff' of Indian genii. The artist is only too willing to give them a pleasing
form, as in the case of Field-Marshal (mahd-send-pati) Skanda. It is rare that he will
ever do more than spoil this elegance by adding plumpness, necessarily associated
in the Indian mind with wealth, as, for example, in the representation of General
(send-pati) Pancika. What, however, differentiates Ganesa from his fellow-spirits
is not only his excessive corpulence, but a still greater handicap, equally impossible
to conceal—his elephant's head: nothing more is needed to suggest, in fact to prove,
NEED we be surprised if Ganesa, God of Success, achieved for himself a truly
remarkable career ? As the reader will gather from the present work, his striking
figure won all the Eastern countries in turn. His presentation to the European
and American publics was all that was required to make him known throughout
the world, and every one will agree that for the last step he could not have chosen
better sponsors than the author of The Gods of Northern Buddhism and the Clarendon
Press.
Blinking his cunning little eyes on either side of his huge trunk, he can boast,
with a certain feeling of gratification, that in spite of his uncouth looks, or perhaps
because of them, he is now universally accepted; and this must be all the more
flattering to his self-esteem, since—as he himself is quite aware—his humble origins
are evident to every one. A mere glance at him shows that he still bears unquestion-
able signs of his modest lineage. Even if we ignore for the moment his ungainly
elephant's head, yet his short arms, the bulging girth overhanging his stunted legs,
are enough to place him at once in the class to which he belongs. Obviously, Ganesa
is linked with those stout, thickset goblins with which the earliest sculptures of
ancient India have made us familiar, and that appear so often in the texts, now as
the imps of Mara, the Buddhist Satan, now as the yaksas of Kubera, God of Wealth,
now as the raksasas of Kubera's brother, Havana, and sometimes as the ganas of the
'King of the Mountains', Siva. For sheer antiquity their race can hold its own.
Those grotesque dwarfs spring from a family which can be traced, since time began,
from one end of the old continent to the other. By their misshapen bodies, their
guardianship of treasure hoards, and by their freakish and too often evil characters,
the gnomes of India (known under the various names already mentioned and many
more besides, such as kumbhanda, pisaca, vetdla, &c.) are unquestionably the cousins,
morally and physically, of the Scandinavian trolls, the Celtic korrigans, the Anglo-
Saxon goblins, the German kobolds, the Thraco-Phrygian Kabiri, not to mention
the Arabian jinn. Even to-day we find them deeply rooted in our countryside,
disporting themselves on moors, in woods, and in caves ; but venerable die-hards as
they are, those spirits occupy the lowest rung in the hierarchic ladder. Ganesa,
as his name implies, rose to the rank of chieftain (isa) ; yet in attaining the dignity
of 'Lord of the Hordes', his appearance remained like that of his followers, the
ganas.
In this respect he was not so fortunate as the other 'army-leaders' who form the
'General Staff' of Indian genii. The artist is only too willing to give them a pleasing
form, as in the case of Field-Marshal (mahd-send-pati) Skanda. It is rare that he will
ever do more than spoil this elegance by adding plumpness, necessarily associated
in the Indian mind with wealth, as, for example, in the representation of General
(send-pati) Pancika. What, however, differentiates Ganesa from his fellow-spirits
is not only his excessive corpulence, but a still greater handicap, equally impossible
to conceal—his elephant's head: nothing more is needed to suggest, in fact to prove,