Interesting Facts About Lord Ganesha : The festival of Ganesh Chaturthi will begin tomorrow for an 11 day puja that will end with the Ganesh Visarjan (immersion.) The festival is celebrated with great enthusiasm in the country and here are a few interesting facts about the Lord the festival is dedicated to, Ganesha.
1. Ganesha is the son of Shiva and Parvati and has an elephant head with a human body. Lord Ganesh is known as the Lord of success and destroyer of evil. Many also worship him as a God of knowledge, education, wealth and wisdom.
2. Lord Ganesh is one of the five prime Hindu deities – Brahma, Shiva, Vishnu, Ganesh, and Durga.
3. The Hindu mythology says that Jaya and Vijaya, Parvati’s friends gave her the suggestion to create Lord Ganesh. Paravati is known to have made him from the dirt of the earth.
4. It is said Paravati created Ganesha during a time Shiva was away on his meditating trips. How Ganesh lost his head is, after Shiva returned and found Ganesh claiming to be Parvati’s son he cut his head off. Parvati then told Shiva, he had killed their son. Shiva immediately ordered his men to find a head to replace the one he cut off. The first animal they could find was an elephant and it resulted in Ganesha’s present appearance.
5. The Shiva Maha Purana states that the body color of Lord Ganesh is red and green.
6. The Brahmavavart Purana says that when Ganesh was born, the gods came to bless him. Among them, Shani Dev refused to look at Ganesh, Parvati questioned his actions. Shani Dev told her if he looked directly at Ganesha he would lose his head. But Parvati insisted he looked at him and in fact, Ganesh lost his head.
7. The Shiva Maha Purana tells us that Ganesh was married to Riddhi and Siddhi and he had two sons Shetra and Laabh.
8. Ganesha is known by many names but one, in particular, is ‘Ekdant’ meaning ‘one toothed’ and it is often represented with a broken tusk on his idol.
9. The Hindu epic Mahabharata was originally written by Ganesha. It is known that Sage Ved Vyasa the narrator of the Mahabharata decided Ganesh should be the scribe. The narrator felt that no one else in the Universe had the required wisdom to do the task of writing down the ancient wisdom of the world.
10. The Tulsi plant is a part of a number of Hindu traditions but when it comes to Ganesh, tulsi is never used. The reason behind this is Tulsi asked Ganesh to marry him but he declined and so Tulsi cursed him. In return, Ganesh got angry and cursed Tulsi to exclude her from any worship of Lord Ganesh.
