Among the host of characters in the Hindu pantheon, Ganesha is a very popular, mysterious and at the same time one of the most revered gods. It has an original appearance: the human body is crowned with an elephant's head with a trunk. Such an" anatomical feature " of his images cannot but cause amazement among non-Indians. "Wow, God is wearing a gas mask!" exclaimed a foreign tourist who first saw the sculptural image of Ganesha in the temple. Hindus look at his grotesque figure with awe, because they firmly believe that success in life depends on Ganesha. Without mentioning his name, none of the temple rituals begin, and without offering gifts to his sculptural or picturesque image, they do not begin to implement their plans, even the most trivial ones. There is hardly a village in India that does not have a shrine dedicated to Ganesha, and it is revered by ordinary Hindus and sophisticated, illiterate and highly educated, and not only by Hindus, but also by representatives of other native Indian religions - Buddhism and Jainism. EVOLUTION OF THE IMAGE OF GANESHA - FROM DISLIKE TO ADORATION Paintings and sculptures of Ganesha are found not only in temples. In India, you can see them everywhere: in almost every shop owned by a Hindu, in every house, and even at road intersections. But above all, Ganesha lives in the heart of the Hindu, regardless of which branch of Hinduism he belongs to. In one form or another, the cult of Ganesha has gone far beyond the borders of India. It is widely practiced in the Kingdom of Nepal (90% of the population professes Hinduism), traces of it have remained in Burma, China, Indochina, Sri Lanka and Indonesia (Java). Why is a deity who is not part of the triad of supreme Hindu gods, including Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, so religiously revered by devout Hindus? Not only and not so much because Ganesha is the son of Shiva, and he is often seen as a mediator when asking for leniency to this all-powerful and terrible god of the Hindu trinit ... Read more