Vinayaki
An elephant-headed goddess linked to Ganesha and the yoginis.
Vinayaki is an elephant-headed Hindu goddess whose mythology and iconography remain poorly defined. She is generally associated with the elephant-headed god Ganesha due to her elephantine features, and is known by various feminine forms of his epithets. Little is told about her in Hindu scriptures, and very few images of this deity exist.
Quick Facts
- Affiliation
- Shakti of Ganesha
- Matrika
- Yogini
- God of
- Goddess of Beginnings
- Mount
- Mouse
- Consort
- Ganesha
Facts from the source article.
Images
The earliest known elephant-headed goddess figure is a mutilated terracotta plaque from Rairh, Rajasthan, dated from the first century BCE to the first century CE. The goddess is elephant-faced with the trunk turning to the right and has two hands; eroded emblems prevent clear identification. Other sculptures appear from the tenth century onward. A famous example is the forty-first yogini in the Chausath Yogini Temple, Bhedaghat, where the goddess, called Sri-Aingini, has her bent left leg supported by an elephant-headed male, presumably Ganesha. A rare metal sculpture from Chitrapur Math, Shirali, shows her full-breasted but slender, unlike Ganesha, wearing the Yajnopavita and two neck ornaments; her two front hands hold abhaya and varada mudras, while her back arms carry a sword and a noose, with the trunk turned left. This image is probably tenth century from north-western India and belongs to the Tantric Ganapatya sect or the vamachara Shakta sect. A Pala Vinayaki from Giryek, Bihar, is not pot-bellied and carries a gada, ghata, parashu and possibly a radish. A Pratihara image shows a pot-bellied Vinayaki with four arms holding a gada-parashu combination, a lotus, an unidentifiable object and a plate of modak sweets, which the trunk grabs; in both images the trunk turns right. Damaged two-armed or four-armed images also appear in Ranipur Jharial, Gujarat and Rajasthan. In an image from Satna, Vinayaki is one of five theriocephalic goddesses; the cow-headed yogini Vrishabha holds the baby Ganesha, and Vinayaki, pot-bellied, carries an ankusha. A similar image of Ganeshyani appears at the Bhuleshwar Temple of Shiva near Pune.
Texts
Elephant-headed females in the Puranas are demonesses or cursed goddesses. In a tale about Ganesha's birth, the elephant-headed demoness Malini gives birth to Ganesha after drinking Parvati's bath-water, though she is not called Vinayaki. The Harivamsa, Vayu Purana and Skanda Purana describe elephant-faced Matrikas, grahas and ganas with names like Gajananā, Gajamukhi and Gajasya; scholar Krishan relates these to Jyeshtha, the goddess of misfortune. Vainayaki appears in the Matsya Purana (c. 550 CE) as one of the Matrikas created by Shiva to defeat the demon Andhaka, possibly as a shakti of Shiva rather than Ganesha; only the name suggests association with Vinayaka. She also figures in a list of shaktis in the Linga Purana. The Agni Purana (tenth century) lists shaktis of Ganesha but does not include Vainayaki or any elephant-faced shakti; Vainayaki appears in a list of sixty-four yoginis in the same Purana. Srikumara's Shilparatna describes Shakti-Ganapati, a female form of Ganesha with an elephant head and two trunks, a young woman's body, vermilion red, ten-armed, pot-bellied with full breasts and beautiful hips, residing in the Vindhyas; this form is also interpreted as a composite of Ganesha and his shakti.
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