Child Ganesh Installed on the Sacred Syllable AUM

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This four-armed cute image, plumpish like a cushioned velvet toy and lustrous as cast of molten gold, rendered against a pale opaque monochromic background not dragging the eye away to other details, represents Lord Ganesh perceived as a child. Of any art-theme the form of Ganesh is one that the Indian artists – painters, sculptors or textile weavers and designers, have most experimented with, and in them his forms as child surpass any other. However, contrary to the most of his forms as child represent him as engaged in one innocent mischief or other, at least slipping a ‘laddu’ into his mouth, or rolling down another unnoticed to his mouse, the child Ganesh in this image has been represented as absorbed in some deep thought, a deep concern or the like. Otherwise occupied he has forgotten to put into his mouth the ‘laddu’ that he has in one of his hands.

The child Ganesh has been painted as seated in ‘lalitasana’ – the sitting posture in which the right leg is laid suspending downwards, and left, horizontally, revealing great beauty of form, on a wooden block carved with ‘AUM’, the sacred syllable with rare mystic significance venerated in India across sectarian lines. On his left there is a blue granite Shiva-ling, and on his right, a large size trident and double drum, the attributes of his father Lord Shiva. The wood-piece, he is seated on, looks like a textile printing hand block used for printing textiles, a device in use since ages for producing multiple impressions of a particular form, design or motif. Though strange, inclusion of this block-like form in this miniature has mystical connotations. It connotes, perhaps, that the presence of Ganesh, the Lord of auspices, multiplies auspiciousness that the mystic syllable AUM represents. As multiplies the wooden block a form on textile Ganesh multiplies good and auspicious in life and the universe.

Though a contemporary work, the association of the mystic syllable AUM transforms this image of Ganapati into one of his classified forms enumerated in various related texts. Highly venerated and dually sacred, the Puranas have identified this form of the elephant god as Tryakshara Ganapati, the Lord of three alphabets – AUM, the aggregate cosmic sound. The gold-complexioned Tryakshara Ganapati who radiates even in darkness stands for greater good and is the most auspicious of his all forms for Ganapati, who is by himself the lord of auspices, has been added with the most sacred syllable 'AUM' which is considered as much auspicious and sacred in Indian tradition. Tryakshara Ganapati is relatively a simpler iconography but is endowed with quite significant symbolism involved in the image’s anatomy itself. One of the legs of Tryakshara Ganapati, as in this image, is conceived as set on the earth whereas the other stretches from left to right. His crown crested with a peacock feather has upward thrust creating a geometry that moves vertically, as also horizontally, suggesting that the auspicious Lord casts his spell from the earth to the sky and horizon to horizon.

A contemporary transform of Tryakshara Ganapati, not adhering to his exact iconographic form, this image is four-armed but carries in three of them an axe, goad and ‘laddu’ and holds the fourth in ‘Abhaya’, not broken tusk, noose and mango, and ‘laddu’ in the trunk, as he holds in Tryakshara Ganapati form. Goad alone is common to both forms. As in Tanjore paintings, the child Ganesh has lustrous body-colour, plumpish but proportionate anatomy, moderately sized trunk and ears large enough to reach the shoulders, rosy palms and feet and elegantly dressed hair adorned with a delicate crown embedded with rubies, emeralds, diamonds and pearls, besides the peacock feather crest. The elephant god has been conceived as wearing a golden yellow ‘antariya’ – lower wear, maroon sash as waistband and a green sash around his shoulders, besides a few but bold and highly colourful ornaments : laces around the neck, girdle and embedded gold rings around the wrists and feet.

This description by Prof. P.C. Jain and Dr. Daljeet. Prof. Jain specializes on the aesthetics of literature and is the author of numerous books on Indian art and culture. Dr. Daljeet is the curator of the Miniature Painting Gallery, National Museum, New Delhi. They have both collaborated together on a number of books.