Ganesha
This statue of the god Ganesh (decorated for evening worship) comes from the Mahakaleshvar temple in the city of Ujjain. The temple's primary deity is Mahakaleshvar, a form of Shiva (see the section on Shiva), but virtually all Hindu tmeples have images of other gods and goddesses as well. Ganesh is the "lord of obstacles" (both giving them and taking them away) and in this capacity is always supposed to come first (in worship or in mention, as here).
This Ganesh image is at the entrance to Anasuya Devi the village (5 km north of Mandal village). The image has been sculpted out of the surrounding rock, and then covered to keep it protected.ccAs the "Lord of Beginnings" and the "Lord of Obstacles," Ganesh is an appropriate deity to guard an entrance (the place where things begin). And in fact, one will often see people touch the threshold of a door or a temple gateway, and then put their fingertips to their forehead--because a threshold is to be an aniconic (nonfigural) form of Ganesh himself. Oct. 2014
This Ganesha in Joshimath's Narasingh temple complex was sculpted from black basalt in the 10-11th c. CE, and is about two feet high. I see it every time I pass through. Everyone responds to a work of art differently, and the first time I saw this I knew that it was a museum-quality image. That it is still in a temple and an object of daily worship makes it even more beautiful.
When I first saw this image in 2002, it was sitting an in open niche in the temple courtyard. This worried me, because image theft (for private collections or black-market museum sales) is on ongoing problem...the region is poor, the images are valuable, and people can be tempted. So it was with some relief that I that the next time I came to view the image, I found that a gate had been installed in the niche. The visual image of a god being shut up in jail was a little distressing, but far less troubling than having it be stolen.
Here's a fresco of Ganesh (right) and Bhairava (left), painted on the wall of a pilgrim rest house in Haridwar. The building was built in 1923 (and by January 2005 these had been painted over, and lost forever).
Copper alloy Ganesha statue from Tamil Nadu in the Chola Period (12th C. CE), now housed that New York's Metropolitan Museum. Chola statues were made using the lost-wax casting process, in which a detailed image was crafted from beeswax, and then covered with layers of clay. When the clay was fired the wax would vaporize, leaving a mold in which the molten metal could be poured. When the metal cooled, the mold was broken and the statue was cleaned and polished. These exquisite works are one of a kind.
Note the coins left as offerings at the statue's base, breaking the imaginary wall between museum exhibit and temple image. I left some of my own! New York 2017