Heramba Ganesha - The Protector of the Poor

This five faced manifestation of the elephant headed god represents his Heramba Ganapati form. In this form Ganapati is conceived with five heads and ten arms. Heramba Ganapati is known and revered as the 'Protector of poor' and as the deity who bestows bliss all over. He guards all directions with his four faces and all worlds below and above with the fifth one. He has been conceived with a complexion of the moon and also as much soothing and shining. Heramba Ganapati rides a lion, has one tusk broken and wears a garland upon his chest. He carries in his hands a noose, rosary, axe, mace or hammer, fruit and 'modaka'. Gestures of protection and bliss characterise his demeanour. One and sometimes two of his hands impart 'abhaya', or the boon of fearlessness.

This magnificent piece of bronze, cast using the lost-wax process, manifests this most difficult form of Ganesha iconography but only after severally deviating from the prescribed line. The image of the lord is not only without the prescribed lion but also without his usual mouse. It is likely that a detached and unsupported figure of the deity imbalanced by its difficult and disproportioned iconography consisting of five heads and ten arms could not be conveniently installed on a lion.

His delicately carved figure has been installed on a pedestal consisting of a lotus. With his bejewelled tender feet he stands alert, as if for the protection of his devotees, which as Heramba Ganapati is his prime act. He is wearing a 'dhoti' with fine wrinkles on it. His pot like belly has on it a yajnopavita and on all five trunks he has 'tripunda' mark characterising him as a deity of Shaivite line and a repeated circle indicative of cosmos rotating with and within the wheel of time. Ganesha , as the god of 'ganas', has his eyes fixed on this circle, that is, both the time and space are within his purview.

Heramba Ganapati forms are a rarity in art obviously because it is tedious for any artistic or iconographic skill to plant five elephant heads on a single human torso. For a medium like bronze it is yet more difficult. But the artist has immensely succeeded not only in creating a transparent moon like complexion, sensuous warmth, refined plasticity, unique luminosity and a kind of spiritual serenity in creating his deity image but has also maintained formative proportions, unity of form, symmetry of repeated members and all without letting its aesthetics suffer.

Click Here to View the Reverse of this sculpture.

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