~Some more Ganesha tidbits of Info~[festivals & worship]

[Guest guest]

Jai Ganapati Deva, dear family!

Here are some more interesting tidbits about Lord Ganesha, thanks to

dear Melody.

 

~Festivals and Worship of Ganesha~

 

In India, there is an important festival honoring Ganesha. While it

is most popular in the state of Maharashtra, it is performed all over

India. It is celebrated for ten days starting from Ganesh Chaturthi.

This was introduced by Balgangadhar Tilak as a means of promoting

nationalist sentiment when India was ruled by the British. This

festival is celebrated and it culminates on the day of Ananta

Chaturdashi when the murti of Lord Ganesha is immersed into the most

convenient body of water. In Bombay the murti is immersed in the

Arabian Sea and in Pune the Mula-Mutha river. In various North and

East Indian cities, like Kolkata, they are immersed in the holy Ganga

river.

 

Representations of Shri Ganesh are based on thousands of years of

religious symbolism that resulted in the figure of an elephant-head

god. In India, the statues are impressions of symbolic significance

and thus have never been claimed to be exact replications of a living

figure. Ganesh is seen not as a physical entity but a higher

spiritual being, and murtis, or statue-representations, act as

signifiers of him as an ideal. Thus, to refer to the murtis as idols

betrays Western Judeo-Christian understandings of insubstantial

object worship whereas in India, Hindu deities are seen to be

accessed through points of symbolic focus known as murtis. For this

reason, the immersion of the murtis of Ganesh in nearby holy rivers

is undertaken since the murtis are acknowledged to be only temporal

understandings of a higher being as opposed to being 'idols,' which

have traditionally been seen as objects worshipped for their own sake

as divine.

 

The worship of Ganesha in Japan has been traced back to 806.

 

Recently, there has been a resurgence of Ganesha worship and an

increased interest in the "western world" due to a spate of miracles

in september 1995. On september 21, 1995, according to Hinduism Today

magazine (www.hinduismtoday.com), as well as the book Ganesha,

Remover of Obstacles by Manuela Dunn Mascetti, Ganesh statues in

India began spontaneously drinking milk when a spoonful was placed

near the mouth of statues honoring the elephant god. The phenomena

spread from New Delhi to New York, Canada, Mauritius, Kenya,

Australia, Bangladesh, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Sri

Lanka, Nepal, Hong Kong, Trinidad, Grenada and Italy among other

reported places. This was seen as a miracle by Hindu and non-Hindu

alike, and a reminder of the God's playfulness and love of pranks and

tricks. [1]