Vinayaka
विनायक vināyakaAn older name for Ganesha; in the earliest texts, a class of malevolent obstacle-causing spirits who had to be propitiated.
Where this term appears
- Who is Ganesha? Deities
The Manava Grihyasutra , a manual of household ritual usually dated to around the second century BCE, names four Vinayakas : Shalakatankata, Kushmandarajaputra, Ushmita, and Devayajana.
- Eighty-five titles and no text: the Saura tantras and how a tradition disappears Lineages
Bühnemann says flatly that the chapter carrying the Vinayaka and graha worship is not an original part of the work.
- What is Ganesh Chaturthi? Worship
The god who clears the road Ganesha is the elephant-headed son of Shiva and Parvati, worshipped across the Hindu world as Vighnaharta , the remover of obstacles, and as Vinayaka , the foremost leader.
- From the margins to the Lord of beginnings Treatise
A crowd of spirits What the early ritual texts do describe, and what scholars agree stands most directly behind Ganesha, is a set of beings called the Vinayakas.
- Kin and cousins Treatise
As Vinayaka or Ganapati he appears as a protector and a bringer of success, understood in places as an emanation of the great bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, the embodiment of compassion.
- The history, and the shadow it works on Treatise
The long road The road begins, as the second volume showed, at the margins, with the Vinayakas, the obstacle-spirits to be propitiated in the old ritual manuals.
- The many faces Treatise
Varanasi, the city of Shiva, is guarded by fifty-six Vinayakas, a protective host arranged in concentric rings around the sacred centre, named and located in the Kashi Khanda of the Skanda Purana, each with its…
- A city made of gods Treatise
The outermost wards are the fifty-six Vinayakas , the fifty-six forms of Ganesha, the remover of obstacles, set in ring after ring around Kashi so that no evil crosses into the sacred field without passing the …