Gaṇeśa Caturthī

The boy made of turmeric, and the head that was given

Retold from the Śiva Purāṇa, Rudra Saṁhitā (Kumāra Khaṇḍa). The English translation relied on here is that of J.L. Shastri (Motilal Banarsidass).

Pārvatī wished to bathe undisturbed, and had no one of her own to guard the door — Śiva's attendants were Śiva's, not hers. So she took the turmeric paste from her own body, shaped it into the form of a boy, and breathed life into him. He was hers alone, made from herself. She set him at the entrance with one instruction: let no one in.

When Śiva came and the boy — not knowing him, only keeping his mother's word — barred the door, Śiva was refused entry to his own house by a child he had never seen. The quarrel escalated past reason, as such things do, and in the end Śiva's forces, and Śiva himself, struck off the boy's head.

Pārvatī's grief turned the world dangerous. She had made this child from her own substance, and she would have the cosmos undone before she accepted his death. To restore him, Śiva sent his attendants to bring the head of the first creature they found lying with its head to the north — and they returned with the head of an elephant. Śiva set it upon the boy's body and breathed him back to life. And then he did more: he made the restored child the lord of his own gaṇas — Gaṇa-īśa, Gaṇeśa — and gave him the standing boon that he would be worshipped first, before any god, at the beginning of every rite and every undertaking.

So the obstacle that was created — a locked door, a fatal misunderstanding between a father and a son who did not know each other — became, in its healing, the deity who is invoked to remove obstacles. The one who once stood in the way is now the one cleared first from the path.

What is done, and why

Gaṇeśa Caturthī is the great festival of this — clay images of Gaṇeśa installed in homes and public pavilions, worshipped with modakas (his loved sweet) and red flowers, and after some days carried in procession and immersed in water, the visarjana: the Lord made of earth returns to the element, as Pārvatī's boy of turmeric came from and returned to her substance. He is invoked first because he was given the first place; no beginning is made without him.

How it is kept — at midday

Gaṇeśa is held to have appeared at madhyāhna, midday, so the festival is reckoned by the Caturthī tithi prevailing at midday rather than at sunrise. It falls on Bhādrapada Śukla Caturthī.

Why it is kept

The story is about an obstacle and its transformation. A door that should not have been locked, a child and a father estranged by not-knowing — and out of the worst of it, by a mother's refusal to lose her son, comes the very deity who clears the way for everyone else. We begin with Gaṇeśa because beginnings are exactly where obstacles wait.

Source: Śiva Purāṇa, Rudra Saṁhitā, Kumāra Khaṇḍa (the birth of Gaṇeśa). Translated by J.L. Shastri (Motilal Banarsidass); available at wisdomlib.org.