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His eyes beamed with kindly human interest, and he took what is described as an innocent pleasure in the divine honours paid him by his confiding worshippers. At Chinchvad, a small town about ten miles from Poona in Western India, there lives a family of whom one in each generation is believed by a large proportion of the Mahrattas to be an incarnation of the elephant-headed god Gunputty.
Siva, as Nataraja the Cosmic Dancer, the Rhythm of the Universe, danced before me, flinging out his arms in the passion of creation. Kama, the Indian Eros, bore his bow strung with honey-sweet black bees that typify the heart's desire. Krishna the Beloved smiled above the herd-maidens adoring at his feet. Ganesha the Elephant-Headed, sat in massive calm, wreathing his wise trunk about him.
And before me on a stool rested the cross-legged figure of the four-armed and elephant-headed god, fat, complacent, smiling, to all appearance recovered from the fatigues of a journey of near a hundred leagues and thoroughly contented amidst his new surroundings.
The familiar form of Ganesh, the elephant-headed God of Wisdom, looms from the shadows of a vaulted shrine; Nandi, the sacred bull, stands beneath a carven canopy, and the great memorial of a bygone faith contains the identical galaxy of gods found in the Indian temples of the present day, for the thin veil of Javanese thought is a transparency rather than a disguise, softening rather than hiding the clear-cut outlines of the original idea.
This elephant-headed deity would seem to be an especially appropriate one for worship in Ceylon, if any dumb animal is to typify such an idea. In any instance, it does not seem so repulsive as the serpent worship still in existence near Jaffna. Special medical virtues are claimed for the waters to which we have referred, the hot wells.
Of this last union were born, Ganesa, the elephant-headed god of wisdom, and Indra, the god of the firmament, both chiefs of inferior divinities, the number of which, if all the objects of adoration of the Hindus be included, amounts to three hundred millions.
There had been intercourse of old, too, between Asia and the Western Continent; the elephant-headed god of Mexico, the debased traces of Buddhism in the Aztec religion, the singular coincidences between India and Peru, all seem to show that a stream of communication, however faint, once existed between the Asiatic and American worlds.
Then that great elephant-headed One awoke in the dark and answered, "In three days, if it be thy will, he shall have one lakh of rupees." Then Shiv and Parbati went away. 'But there was a money-lender in the garden hidden among the marigolds' the child looked at the ball of crumpled blossoms in its hands 'ay, among the yellow marigolds, and he heard the Gods talking.
But it is only the ascetic Visravas who by the power of his yoga has heard every word, and with his eyes beheld that Flame of Beauty, who, for a brief space illuminating the world as a Queen, returns to birth in many a shape of sorrowful loveliness until the Blue-throated God shall in his favour destroy her rebirths. Salutation to Ganesa the Elephant-Headed One, and to Shri the Lady of Beauty!
"At least, so it is reported in our district, though to me he seems a fool. But there all races and castes fear him. Curious tales are told of him. Some say that Gunesh, the Elephant-headed One, protects him. Others hold that he is Gunesh himself. Can it be so?" The Dewan smiled. "Since when hast thou believed in the gods again?" he asked. "Well, it is hard to know what is true or false.
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