Why ganesha has a broken tusk

He was looking around to see if he could spot his mouse when he heard a silvery laugh. The moon, having seen him fall, was laughing at him. Now, Ganesha being Ganesha lost his temper easily and was also fast on the draw.

Quick as a flash, Ganesha broke off one of his tusks and flung it at the moon, making a direct hit, and shouted that the moon would never be whole again. Which is why the moon has a crater which we can see right from the Earth and it waxes and wanes.

Ganesha is worshipped first, before all other gods, for he is the auspicious one, the remover of all obstacles. He is worshipped first, before any major project takes off. That is, Maharshi Ved Vyas would have to recite the entire epic at one go, without pausing at all.

Maharshi Ved Vyas agreed to this and he himself put forth another condition. He told the Lord that he would have to understand every hymn, every verse before penning it down. He put this condition with the idea that he would be reciting something very tough; and while Ganesha would be pondering upon its meaning, he would get a scope to take a few moments of rest.

However, that was not the case with Lord Ganesha. He completed penning down the sacred hymns even before the sage had thought of the next. In the mean time, the pen He used for writing down the verses, began to wear away. Aware of His earlier condition, and not finding out any other alternative, the Lord pulled out his left tusk and used it to complete writing the great epic Mahabharata.

It was a full moon that night. As he was riding, his mouse saw a snake and ran behind the bush. Ganpati fell to the ground and his stomach broke open. Ganpati started to put the food back in his stomach.

The moon god saw him and started laughing loudly. Maharishi Ved Vyasa agreed to it but had his own condition- that Lord Ganesha has to understand everything before penning it down so that Maharishi gets to rest in between the recitation. It is believed at that when Lord Ganesha was writing, his pen began to wear away and as He had always proclaimed that He would not be disturbed, He pulled out his left tusk and used it to complete writing the great epic Mahabharata.

That's why Lord Ganesha is also called Ekdantaya. By seeing the snake, the mouse on whom Ganesha was riding ran away and Ganesha fell but not before catching the snake and holding his belly. The Moon witnessed this and laughed at Lord Ganesha, which made Him angry, and cursed the moon and threw his tusk on him, which broke the moon.

Ganapati also cursed it to be dark and said whosoever sees the moon on Chaturthi day would be laughed at. This is why viewing Moon on Ganesh Chaturthi is considered inauspicious and is believed to create Mithya Dosham. Culture Hindu. I grew up thinking that Ganesha broke off his own tusk to take dictation from Veda Vyasa.

The story goes that Vyasa wanted to dictate an epic poem, the Mahabharata. He needed someone to write it down as it flowed from his mind. Nobody capable was found to exist on Earth, so he approached Ganesha or Vighna Vinayaka, the remover of obstacles, and requested him to help out.

Since Vyasa was clever - he composed a long and complicated epic like the Mahabharata - he made a counter-condition that Ganesha had to understand every word before he wrote it down.

Ganesha was pleased to agree, secretly delighted. He broke off his own tusk to write with, as proof of goodwill, and they began the task. Every now and then, Vyasa would compose a number of verses in extremely layered and dense language. Ganesha would have to pause to think them through before putting them down on the palm-leaf pages.