How the human face ganapathi became an elephant faced one

How the human face ganapathi became an elephant faced one

Though he may be in any other form, I recall the rare human form "nara muka ganapathi", in which he is not in the elephant form. On the south street of Chidambaram, he is not in his popular elephant face, as if written or recognized by others "this child is some one" - he is with a human face. In Tiruchirappalli's rock fort temple also we have a human face ganapathi. There is a funny one here: even though the temple has a ganapathi without elephant face, when singing about that temple's god (Siva) sambandar, he tells about his many attributes, and calls the god as "elephant – which yanai in Tamil" at each sentence. He sang, "Nandrudaiyanai, umayalai pakam udaiyanai, thiruvudaiyanai, chirappalli kundrudaiyanai- my heart will cool calling these names."

 

In the many stories that tell the feats of vigneswara his original form is human face form only. The mother goddess thought of creating a gate keeper in her private chambers. She scrapped turmeric, kumkum and other scent powers from her body, and moulded them in the form of a child, and gave life to the form, to be a gate keeper. The form was human face one, with eyes, ears, nose and tongue as in a human (and a god). The boy who would be called as pillaiyar – the cherished boy that she created from her own body – she kept him as gate keeper and went for a bath.

 

She is always auspicious. Because she scrapped from her auspicious body, the auscipious turmeric power and created the ganapathi – even today when beginning any good activity we create a ganapathi out of turmeric powder and offer prayers. Manjal (Tamil for Turmeric) comes from Mangala. In Tamil, do not some people say "inje and anje" for inge and ange? In grammatic Tamil also "toongal" comes as "tunjal". Like this, mangala has become manjal. In Sanskrit, managalam has a meaning as manjal.

 

Parameswaran came to the private chambers. He got very angry "who is this male person in the private chamber?,"and beheaded the boy as if he did not know anything. In actual fact, knowingly, in order to do good to the world, that too to do it as an exciting drama, he did so. The worldly good is – there was a gajamukasuran – a demon with an elephant head – who had got a boon that only an enemy with an elephant head born between a man and woman could kill him. That is one side. On the other side, when this event that we witnessed happened, in the world near kailasa there was chaos because an elephant was sleeping with its head facing north. Combing these both events the lord played his drama. He happily received severe words from Goddess for beheading the boy creating by her. Afterwards, he beheaded the elephant sleeping in the other world with the head facing north, and brought that head and fixed it on this boy, who got a new life as pillaiyar, to the satisfaction of goddess. He also made gajamukasuran to be destroyed by pillaiyar and restored happiness in the world.