Chubby, with an Insatiable Sweet-Tooth
Posted on 06. Dec, 2021 by Paul Sochaczewski in Ganesha and Collecting
This article is one of a series, available here, that has been adapted from Searching for Ganesha: Collecting Images of the Sweet-Loving, Elephant-Headed Hindu Deity Everybody Admires. Available in paperback and ebook from Amazon.
ISBN: Print: 978-2-940573-37-0
E-Book: 978-2-940573-38-7
Chubby, with an Insatiable Sweet-Tooth
How a Fat Belly and a Bowl of Sugary Dumplings Define Ganesha
by
Paul Spencer Sochaczewski
www.sochaczewski.com
If Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung had wanted just one Hindu god to study for symbolic complexity, it would have been Ganesha.
For a start, Ganesha has 74 different attributes, or physical symbols, that artists can feature.
- He carries a goad (cattle prod) that pushes mankind towards wisdom and right-living.
- The noose enables the faithful to arrest delusion, curb the ego, and restrain passion.
- He is seen holding or standing on a lotus, which represents enlightenment.
- Ganesha’s hatchet signifies that a devotee’s accumulated bad deeds get severed when enlightenment comes.
- If Ganesha is shown sitting with one foot on the ground and the other resting on his knee, that illustrates that in order to live a successful life one should use knowledge and reason to overcome emotions.
- Ganesha is able to control his vehicle, the mouse or rat, which is voracious and a symbol of our emotions and desires, which are never satisfied.
- He wears a hand-spun cotton sacred thread, yajnopavita, across his chest, which indicates Ganesha is a master of religious philosophy, a holy man of the highest achievement. It also illustrates the transformative rite of upanayana in which a young man leaves the nurture of his mother and submits to the cultural representative of the superego, the guru.
* * *
And then there is Ganesha’s belly.
Ganesha is generally pictured as having a prominent stomach; two of Ganesha’s 108 names are Lambodara (Pot Belly) and Mahodara (Great Belly) .
There are two explanations for his obesity, one based on imposing a Western lifestyle on the god, the other on Hindu cosmology.
The prosaic Western Cartesian explanation is that Ganesha simply has an elephant-sized sweet tooth, and isn’t worried about his weight or cardio fitness. Fat people (and fat gods) are happy!
However, like many things in Hindu belief, there is an esoteric, spiritual explanation. Several, in fact.
- Ganesha’s large stomach, like a cosmic beer belly, is the result of his having swallowed the troubles of the world for the protection and beneficence of mankind.
- His big belly signifies his hyper-powerful kundalini energy. (And to contain such spiritual power he wears a Naga-snake-belt, a common representation of kundalini, the yogic life force that is believed to lie coiled at the base of the spine in the first, or “root “chakra.
- Most dramatic, his protruding stomach is by necessity large in order to contain the wisdom of all universes: past, present and future.
* * *
Ganesha’s favorite sweet is the modak, a dumpling-sized treat from the central state of Maharashtra that is typically made with rice flour, jaggery (palm sugar), and grated coconut. It might be steamed or fried. It is similar to the laddu, generally made with chickpea flour, which is popular in the north of the country. The shape of each sweet dumpling represents a nugget of wisdom, and each dumpling also resembles a bag of money. And, because modak are shaped like an upward-pointing triangle, they represent the quest for spiritual understanding.
His love of sweet modak represents the rewards of a wise life.
Like most things having to do with Ganesha, there are multiple backstories explaining why modak is his preferred offering. One well-known tale involves sibling rivalry.
Shiva and Parvati were lounging in their abode in the high Himalaya, accompanied by their two sons, Ganesha and Kartikeya.
One day a group of gods visited and presented them with a divine modak containing the nectar of Supreme Knowledge and Immortality. The gods were clear: “This is a special sweet, and must be given only to the wisest and most deserving son.”
Ganesha and Kartikeya, like brothers everywhere, were competitive.
“Me, me!” they cried in unison.
Parvati would not give in to whining.
“You two can compete for it, like normal children. I’ll give the sweet of wisdom to the first son who circumambulates the universe first.”
Being faster and stronger than Ganesha, Kartikeya smiled (and his smile was dazzling, given that he had six heads), climbed on to his vehicle, a peacock named Parvani, and set off into the outer reaches of the infinite skies, stopping at all sacred sites in distant galaxies to say his prayers. As he zoomed past each star he imagined the promised sweet taste of wisdom that would be his once he returned victorious.
Ganesha didn’t move; he sat at home, calmly nibbling a mango.
“Shouldn’t you be setting off?” Shiva asked him. “You’re letting Kartikeya have a big head start.”
Being a petulant teenager, Ganesha shrugged off his father’s comment and continued to lounge around the house. His father and mother grumbled and made tsk-tsk noises.
After several eons had passed news of Kartikeya’s impending return reached the Shiva and Parvati household. When he sensed that Kartikeya was quickly approaching, Ganesha calmly rose, walked around his parents three times (who were sitting on the sofa, perhaps watching cricket) and sat down at their feet.
“What are you doing, my son?” Parvati asked.
“I’m circumambulating the realm of eternity,” he said. “My parents encompass the entire universe. The one we know, and all universes yet to be named.”
And so Ganesha won the fraternal competition, and, to this day, is rewarded by offerings of modak.
The artist of this seated Ganesha painted on vintage Indian stamp tax paper, one of the pieces in my collection, has crammed in a multitude of Ganesha-related symbols – the throne, royal posture, lotus, Naga, modak, mouse, sacred yajnopavita thread, and the om symbol.
This Sri Lankan bronze shows Ganesha in a chariot pulled by his mouse vahana. Ganesha sits in the regal posture with his trunk in a bowl of modak. There is a third eye and dharma wheel on the back of his head. And Hamsa, the swan vehicle of both Brahma and his consort Saraswati, sits on the front of the chariot.
There are many symbols in this colorful village representation of Ganesha, painted by women of the Mithila region of India, in the state of Bihar. He stands on his mouse vahana, holds a conch shell (a giver of fame, longevity and prosperity, the cleanser of sin and the abode of goddess Lakshmi, who is the goddess of wealth and consort of Vishnu), a lotus, and a bowl of modak. He wears a sacred yajnopavita thread and a crown. At the bottom right there is a damaru, the sacred drum used by Ganesha’s father Shiva when he created the universe.
Background
Paul near the summit of Gunung Gamalama, Ternate, Indonesia
Paul Spencer Sochaczewski first went to Southeast Asia in 1969 with the United States Peace Corps, where he was assigned to assist rural teachers in Sarawak, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo. He remained in Asia for some 20 years, working in advertising and journalism, and those experiences have informed his writing on a wide variety of Asian-themed topics and quests.
He has lived and worked in some 85 countries and written 16 books and some 600 articles for publications including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC Wildlife, Travel and Leisure, and Reader’s Digest. His latest book, Searching for Ganesha, has been published to generous reviews. During the first week, the book has become an Amazon #1 bestseller in three categories – Asian Travel Photography, Private Museums and Collections, and Biographies in Hinduism. For more on Paul’s background please click here.