Ganesha's oldest name refers not to his elephant head but to his broken tusk
Hindus of every denomination pray to Ganesha first, before any other god, as the remover of obstacles and patron of beginnings. His earliest name, Ekadanta, means one-tusked, and many old statues show him clutching the broken piece. His pot belly, one Purana claims, contains every universe past, present and future.
Ganesha, also called Ganapati, Vinayaka and Pillaiyar, is among the most widely worshipped Hindu deities and the supreme being of the Ganapatya sect. He carries the title Pratham Pujya, the one honoured first, and is invoked at the start of rituals and even writing sessions, as lord of learning, logic and wisdom. Devotion spread to Jains and Buddhists: in Thailand he is Phra Phi Khanet, in Burmese Maha Peinne, and Sinhalese Buddhists in Sri Lanka revere him as Gana deviyo.
His name joins the Sanskrit gana, a group or multitude, with isha, lord. The gana are often read as the semi-divine troop attending his father Shiva. A word Ganapati appears in the Rigveda of the second millennium BCE, though whether it meant this god is uncertain. Texts mention him between the first century BCE and second century CE, images survive from the fourth and fifth centuries, and by the sixth century his statues were common across India.
Puranic stories explain the elephant head in several ways. The most common says Parvati shaped him from clay as a guardian; when he blocked Shiva's way, Shiva struck off his head and replaced it with an elephant's. Another version has him born from Shiva's laughter and given the elephant features because he was too alluring. One popular form, Heramba-Ganapati, has five heads.
Iconography shifts with time. The earliest images show two arms and no mount; four arms later became standard, and during the ninth and tenth centuries sculptors in central India gave him 14 or even 20. The belly was already prominent in Gupta-period statues of the fourth to sixth centuries, which is why two incarnations are named Lambodara and Mahodara. The mouse became his main vehicle in sculpture of central and western India from the seventh century, but the Mudgala Purana also gives him a lion, a peacock and a serpent.
Source: Ganesha
