IF GANÉSHA STOOD
He is mixed up in countryside stories with mere human creatures in a friendly fashion which shows that he is a popular favourite. Thus, once upon a time Shiva and Parbati were strolling about on the earth, and they visited a temple of Shiva, in the precincts of which sat a poor beggar-man asking for alms. Parbati said to her awful husband, "It is really too bad that this man, who has been begging here for years in your name, should not be better provided for. I call it discreditable." They passed, wrangling, into the court of the temple till Shiva impatiently cried: "Ho! Ganésha." The voice of Ganésha came from the inside—"Ho!" "Let something be done for the tiresome beggar-man your mother has been bothering me about!" "Very good; I will see that he has a lakh of rupees within the next three days." "That will do," said the great Mahadeo, and he passed away with his quarrelsome wife. Now, while they were talking, a Hindu Baniya (dealer and money-lender) was standing hidden behind the pillars, and though nearly frightened to death, he cast about in his greedy mind how to secure that lakh of rupees. So he went to the unconscious beggar, sitting in the outer court, and asked about his earnings. "My earnings are nothing," said the beggar, "sometimes a copper or two, sometimes only cowries, sometimes a handful of rice or pulse;—nothing." Pretending to be interested in the matter from mere curiosity, the usurer offered five rupees for all the beggar earned during the next three days. Startled by this large sum, the beggar held back, protesting the Baniya would be a loser, whereupon more were offered. The talk went on in the dawdling inconclusive way that only those who have tried to strike a bargain in India can understand, till finally the beggar insisted on consulting his wife. As frequently happens in Indian stories, as in Indian life, she was a very clever woman: "Depend upon it that usurer is after no good; offered you fifty rupees, did he? Then it's worth more than fifty times as much. God knows how, but that's not our affair. Go back and don't give over bargaining even if you go as high as half a lakh of rupees."
The beggar went back and the bargain began again, and was finally closed at half a lakh of rupees, which were duly brought to the wondering mendicant.
The usurer hung round the temple, anxious to see how Ganésha would bestow the lakh of rupees on the beggar-man. At last he heard the approach of the Gods, and as they passed the beggar, the mother of Death and Life asked Shiva if anything had been done for him. Again Ganésha was summoned, and as Shiva spoke, the great stone threshold of the temple rose from its place and jammed the trembling usurer's leg against the wall. Said Ganésha—"It is all right! the beggar has received half of the promised lakh of rupees, and I've got the man who owes him the other half fast by the leg here, and he will not be released till he has paid the uttermost farthing."
Then that covetous one's liver was turned to water, for he knew that he who owes to the Gods must pay.
When a native storyteller repeats a triviality of this kind, one seems to see the belly-god asleep in the dusk of the temple and to hear the rustle of his dry trunk uncoiling as he awakes, the jovial carelessness of his voice echoing in the carved vaults and roof, and his chuckle of satisfaction as the usurer is caught.
There is no trace of the humorous and friendly vulgarity by which Ganésha the elephant-headed and Hanumān, the monkey god, are distinguished among the Gods of the Vedas, where the clouds sail high; while the comparative rarity of their sculptures in the older temples shows that they had at first but a small share in official mythology.
Here it may be worth while to say of the popular impression that the Vedas are text-books of Hinduism, that it is incorrect. Most educated Hindus talk of the Vedas, and modern Hindu reformers, like Rammohun Roy, Keshub Chandra Sen, and Dayanand Saraswati, insisted that the Vedas contain the elements of all the religion the world can want; but to whip a dead horse with deep emotion and lively faith does not necessarily bring it to life again, and the Vedas have been dead for centuries. Their literary resurrection is part of the revival of Oriental Scholarship brought about by European Scholars such as Colebrooke and his many successors. It has been said by a competent authority that nine hundred and ninety-nine of every thousand Hindus know nothing about them, and that they are not Hindu in any real sense.
In the earliest myths the elephant is said to take the place of thunder and lightning, and is one of the steeds of Indra, but while horses and cows are perpetually referred to, mentions of the elephant are comparatively rare. The Solar Garuda still survives—(the Brahminy kite is called a garuda in Southern India),—and he carries an elephant in his beak as in the Hindu epics. The ancient fantasy that four elephants support the four corners of the earth is still alive, and they are thus represented in mystic diagrams printed and painted on calico for Hindu Jogis. Pictures and sculptures of the goddess Lakshmi show her seated while elephants pour water over her head from vases upheld in their trunks. It seems fair to conclude that though the elephant was a favourite of the earlier poets, he came late to his present high place in the celestial company through the side door of popular liking. It is also possible that he was admitted late because he was unknown to the earliest writers.
Buddhism, now dead and done with as far as India proper is concerned,—and so overgrown with fungous growth of idolatry and demonolatry in other lands as to be almost unrecognisable,—has its elephant legends. The elephant takes the place of the dove in the Annunciation to Maya Devi of the coming of the Bodisát. She lies asleep and the creature appears to her in many sculptures at Amravati and Southern India, but, hitherto, only once in the extensive series from the North-West frontier where the Buddhist legend is told with more than a mere touch of the classic Art of Europe. Another incident of the legend is the miracle of the subjugation of the elephant, made mast or frenzied by Devaditta, the envious schismatic, and sent to meet and murder the Lord Buddha. They met as the conspirator hoped, but instead of trampling the master underfoot, the creature stood still and worshipped as Buddha touched its forehead. Later stories tell of an elephant's body hurled an immense distance by the Lord Buddha, but they belong to a cycle of incrustations of dead matter.