Analasura, a demon of fire, burns forests and drives the gods from heaven. Shiva tells them to ask Ganesha, who grows enormous and swallows him. The fire then burns in Ganesha's belly. Indra gives the moon, Vishnu a lotus, Varuna pours water and Shiva binds his serpent around the belly, but none of it helps. The sage Kashyapa ties twenty-one blades of durva and lays them on his head, and the heat ends. Ganesha says durva pleases him above all.
Sources: The Analasura and durva story (Ganapati temple and household accounts: Hindu Blog; Ganapati devotional sites)
Lalita's army of goddesses against Bhanda: Bala, aged nine, kills his thirty sons; Mahaganapati, born from her smile, breaks Vishukra's sleeping-charm; avatars spring from her fingernails; the Mahakameshvara missile ends Bhanda; her glance brings Kama back.
Shiva and Parvati must choose between their two sons.
Murugan woos Valli, a hunter chief's daughter guarding the millet fields, as a hunter, a tree and an old man, and wins her with his brother Ganesha's help as a wild elephant; when her father's men attack, they fall, and she brings them back to life.
The Smarta school worships five deities — Ganesha, Shiva, Shakti, Vishnu and Surya, with Kartikeya added in the south — set in a quincunx around the worshipper's chosen one, as equal forms of the one Brahman; tradition credits Adi Shankara, though the practice is older.
Parvati wants a guard of her own and shapes a boy from the paste on her body.
Ravana wins Shiva's own linga by fierce penance, to take home to Lanka.
Parvati asks Shiva for the secret of never dying.
How the goddess of learning came to be seen at her few temples: Shandilya's journey in Kashmir, Vyasa's sand images at Basar, the poet's village at Koothanur, and her spring festival in Bengal.