Ganesha: The Enchanter of the Three Worlds

To penetrate the interior of the great Hindu culture in company with Ganesa, the most popular God of the immense peninsula, is an adventure henceforth possible thanks to the book by Paul Martin-Dubost, who offers a complete study of this God with the elephant head, the dear son of Parvati and the great Lord Siva. We discover the legends which surround the stories of his birth, his prodigious exploits, his marriage, and all that touches upon his rites for more than 2,000 years. It is quite rare to find a literary text, a panegyric hymn or an iconographic text that does not mention Ganesa, the benevolent God, the God with innumerable forms; during ten years Paul Martin-Dubost has engaged himself with the God in the great Sanskrit texts as also in inscriptions. This work dissipates the erroneous conceptions, current since long, notably because of the limited scope of the previous studies. The reader, as also the scholar, will discover a complete study of the iconography of Ganesa, the chief of the ganas, in the light of recent archaeological works. A commentary accompanies each of the 450 photographs which reveal the principal forms created between the Ist century B.C. and our own day.