Ganesh Chaturthi

Overview

Ganesh Chaturthi — Vinayaka Chaturthi in the south, Ganeshotsav as the ten-day public festival of Maharashtra — is Ganesh’s birthday, kept on Bhadrapada Shukla Chaturthi with the installation of a clay image at home or in a public pandal, daily worship, and immersion in water on a chosen day up to Anant Chaturdashi. The clay image and the immersion are the festival’s shape: Ganesh arrives, is a guest, and is seen off. See the Ganesh page for the deity.

Story and scripture

The Ganesha Purana (Upasana Khanda) and the Shiva Purana (Rudra Samhita, Kumara Khanda) tell the birth: Parvati makes a boy from the turmeric paste of her bath and sets him to guard her door; Shiva, refused entry, beheads him; Parvati’s grief is answered with the head of the first creature found, an elephant. Tradition places the birth at midday on this Chaturthi, which is why the puja is at midday.

The moon’s curse belongs to the day too. The Skanda Purana has Ganesh, full from a feast, fall from his mouse and split his belly; the moon laughs, and Ganesh curses whoever sees the moon on this night to be falsely accused. The Bhagavata Purana’s story of Krishna, the Syamantaka jewel and the accusation of theft (10.56–57) is cited as the curse’s example, and households still avoid looking at the moon on Chaturthi evening.

The public festival is more recent: Bal Gangadhar Tilak turned the household puja into a community event in Pune in 1893, and the Maharashtra Ganeshotsav — the pandals, the processions, the immersion on Anant Chaturdashi — dates from then.

How the day is kept

Sthapana. The image, of unbaked clay (shadu) by tradition, is brought home with a cloth over its face and installed on a decorated platform at midday with pranapratishtha — the mantras that invite the deity into the image — followed by the sixteen offerings. Twenty-one durva grass blades, red flowers (hibiscus), and modak — the steamed rice-flour sweet with coconut and jaggery — are the offerings particular to Ganesh; twenty-one modaks is the conventional number.

The days between. Morning and evening aarti; in Maharashtra the Sukhkarta Dukhharta aarti composed by Samarth Ramdas, elsewhere Jai Ganesh Deva; the Ganesh Atharvashirsha recited by those who know it. Jaap is Om Gan Ganapataye Namah or the longer Vakratunda Mahakaya, both linked below.

Visarjan. The image is carried to water — the sea in Mumbai, a river or tank elsewhere, a bucket at home where cities now ask for it — with the cry Ganpati Bappa Morya, pudhchya varshi lavkar ya (“come early next year”). The tenth day, Anant Chaturdashi, is also the day of the Anant vrata to Vishnu.

Regional forms

• Maharashtra: Ganeshotsav; Mumbai’s Lalbaugcha Raja and Pune’s Dagdusheth Halwai Ganpati draw the largest crowds, and the Anant Chaturdashi immersion processions run through the night.
• Goa: Chavath; the household image, the matoli (a canopy of fruit and forest produce over the shrine), and immersion after one and a half or five days.
• Karnataka, Andhra, Telangana: Vinayaka Chavithi; the Hyderabad Khairatabad Ganesh is among the tallest images made anywhere; the 21-leaf (patri) offering is particular to the south.
• Tamil Nadu: Vinayagar Chaturthi, largely a household and temple day, with the kozhukattai (the Tamil modak).
• North India: a household puja on the day; the ten-day festival has spread to Delhi and UP cities in the last two decades.

The date

The day Chaturthi is current at midday (madhyahna) in one’s own city; the table gives New Delhi. Anant Chaturdashi is ten tithis later, on Bhadrapada Shukla Chaturdashi.

Mantra, aarti and chalisa for Ganesh Chaturthi

Mantra Om Gan Ganapataye Namah ॐ गण गणपतये नमः Mantra Vakratunda Mahakaya वक्रतुंड महाकाय सूर्यकोटि समप्रभ। Aarti Jai Ganesh Jai Ganesh Deva जय गणेश जय गणेश देवा Aarti Sukhkarta Dukhharta सुखकर्ता दुखहर्ता Chalisa Ganesh Chalisa गणेश चालीसा