This figurine depicts elephant headed Indian god Ganesha writing down the epic Mahabharata...Why?
Well considering that Ganesha was regarded as the god of knowledge and wisdom, who better to write down (preserve) one of the most important Indian epics?
But why was Ganesha considered to be the god of knowledge and wisdom? Well knowledge and wisdom is accumulated with experience. The longer one lives and learns the more knowledgable and wise one is...(At least in theory 🙂)
Now Indian elephants reach adulthood at 17 years of age, just like people...The life expectancy of the Indian elephants is about 60 years. Always has been...
While the human life expectancy in India was 25 years in the year 1800, and and is only today the same as the life expectancy of the elephants...
At the time when Indian religion was created, the human life expectancy was probably not higher than in 1800...Probably lower...
Which must have made people believe that elephants, because they were able to live almost three times longer than people, were three times more knowledgable and wiser than people...
Is this also why Ganesha was the god of knowledge and wisdom?
Now elephants have big ears...Is this where the belief that the bigger the ears in a man the more knowledgable and wiser he is?
Like Buddha for instance...
We know that the ancients, including Ancient Indians, believed that the ears were the seat of memory...
Which is why kids at school are pulled by the ears to "stimulate their memory"....
Is this why Ganesha was in charge of writing down (preserving) Mahabharata? Bigger the ears, bigger and better the memory...And these ancient epics were originally preserved through oral transmission, through people learning them by heart...
But because no man lived as long as elephants, and no man had ears as big as elephants 🙂, no man was as wise and had as good a memory as an elephant (you know elephant memory)...
Which is why it was Ganesha, god with elephant head (and most importantly elephant ears 🙂), that was charged with preserving Mahabharata for posterity...
Well at least this is what I think...
I adore your blog!!! In some Mediterranean cultures (Greek and Italian, for sure, probably others too), you get your ears pulled playfully on your birthday. The reasoning for this is either associating the ears with memory and wishing for you to remember your life as you get older, or wishing you a long life, as earlobes grow throughout life.
ReplyDeleteWhen you say "life expectancy in India was 25 years", this must be taken with a grain of salt. It probably refers to life expectancy "at birth", so it includes infant and child mortality, which can be huge and drives down the average. If you consider life expectancy "at 18", say, so how long you are expected to live after you reach 18, then it should be much higher than 25
ReplyDelete