As the Ganapati households tell it
Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu · 2 min read
There was once a demon named Analasura, and he was made of fire. Some say he was born of Yama, the lord of death, and the dancer Tilottama. Wherever he walked the grass went black and the rivers steamed, and when he was angry, which was often, flames poured from his eyes and set the forests alight.
He went up to heaven, and the gods ran from him. Indra threw his thunderbolt and it melted in the air. The sages lost their sacred fires to him, swallowed in one breath. At last the gods went to Kailasa and stood before Shiva.
"Lord, he will burn the three worlds," said Indra. "Nothing we have can touch him."
Shiva looked at the small elephant-headed boy playing near Parvati's feet. "Ask him," he said.
The gods were not sure, but they had nothing left to try. Ganesha listened to them gravely, then got up and walked out to where Analasura was coming over the hills, burning as he came.
The demon saw the boy and roared. "Has heaven sent me a child to eat?"
Ganesha did not answer. He grew. He grew until his head was above the clouds, and he opened his mouth, and he swallowed Analasura whole, flames and all.
The gods cheered. Then they saw Ganesha's face. He had gone red, and then pale, and he was holding his belly. The fire had not gone out. It was burning inside him now.
The gods did what they could. Indra brought the cool light of the moon and set it on his head. Vishnu gave him a lotus to hold. Varuna poured water over him, pot after pot, until the ground around him was a lake. Shiva wrapped his own serpent around Ganesha's belly to bind the fire in. Nothing helped. The heat only grew.
Then an old sage came walking up from the riverbank with his arms full of grass. It was Kashyapa, and the grass was durva, the thin common grass that grows in every field and along every path.
He sat down in front of the boy and began to tie the grass in small bundles, twenty-one blades to a bundle, and he laid the bundles on Ganesha's head one by one. "Twenty-one," he said, as he laid the last.
Ganesha took a long breath. The red went out of his face. The heat in his belly went cool, as if a rain had fallen inside him, and the fire of Analasura was quenched at last.
Ganesha looked at the little heap of grass on the ground. "The gods brought me the moon and lotuses and all the waters," he said. "This old man brought me a handful of grass, and it was the grass that worked. Whoever gives me durva will have given me everything."