The Race Around the Universe: Ganesha’s Wisdom

Shiva and Parvati have two sons: Kartikeya, the general of the divine army, and Ganesha, the elephant-headed remover of obstacles. They are brothers, and they are very different — one swift, bold and made for battle, the other patient, round-bellied and thoughtful. Nowhere is the difference clearer than in the story of the race around the universe, one of the best-loved tales about Ganesha. It is short and easy to tell to children, but it carries a serious idea about where the whole of the world is really to be found.

The two brothers

A little background helps before the story begins.

Kartikeya (Kārttikeya) is also known as Skanda, Kumara and, in the Tamil-speaking south, Murugan. He was born to lead the gods against the demon Taraka, and he is pictured as a young warrior holding a spear, riding a peacock. The peacock is his vāhana — the animal “vehicle” that each Hindu deity rides and that appears beside them in images.

Ganesha (Gaṇeśa), also called Ganapati and Vinayaka, has the head of an elephant, a large belly and a much less glamorous vāhana: a mouse. He is honoured as the lord of beginnings and of wisdom, and as the one who removes obstacles.

The home of the family is Kailasa (Kailāsa), the mountain in the Himalaya where Shiva is said to dwell.

The contest

One day Shiva and Parvati announced a contest between their sons. The prize was magnificent. Accounts vary on exactly what it was — the divine fruit of wisdom, sovereignty over all the worlds, a special fruit of immortality — but in every telling it is the greatest prize on offer. The rule was simple: circle the entire universe and return first.

In a widely told South Indian version, the contest begins when the sage Narada, the wandering celestial messenger, brings a single rare fruit to Kailasa. It cannot be shared, so Shiva and Parvati say it will go to whichever son circles the world and comes back first. In the version found in the Śiva Purāṇa, the question is different: both sons wish to be married first, and their parents set the journey around the earth as the way to decide who should be.

Kartikeya did not wait. He mounted his peacock — swift, splendid and well suited to a warrior god — and set off from Kailasa into the cosmos. He was far away before Ganesha had even begun to think about what to do.

How Ganesha read the problem

Ganesha did think about it.

The challenge looked as if it had an obvious answer: race your brother around the universe. But Ganesha’s vehicle was a mouse, and a mouse will not beat a peacock across the stars. The obvious answer would not work, so he looked for a better one.

He walked to where his parents sat and circled them — three times, in the telling this article follows — keeping them on his right. This walk is called pradakṣiṇā (pradakshina): the respectful circling that devotees still perform around a deity in a temple, around a sacred fire or around a revered person. Then he stood before his parents and stated his case.

“You are my universe,” he said. “You are the source of all that exists. To circle you is to circle all creation, all time and all space. I have gone around the universe, and I have returned first.”

In the Śiva Purāṇa’s telling, Ganesha supports his claim by appealing to scripture: the sacred texts, he says, teach that one who reverently circles their parents gains the same merit as one who travels around the whole earth. If that teaching is true, he has done what was asked. If it is not, the scriptures themselves would be wrong.

The verdict

Accounts of how Shiva and Parvati responded vary. In some versions they were delighted at once. In others, Shiva was amused at first and needed a moment before he recognised the full weight of what his son had said. In all versions the conclusion is the same: Ganesha won — because he was right.

In the fruit version, Ganesha receives the fruit. In the Śiva Purāṇa version, he is married first, to Siddhi and Buddhi — names that mean “success” or “accomplishment” and “intelligence” or “understanding”.

The religious idea behind the verdict is not hidden. For those who hold Shiva as supreme, as in the Shaiva tradition, and for those who worship the Goddess as the ultimate power, as in the Shakta tradition, Shiva and Parvati are not merely the universe in a figure of speech. They are understood as the universe itself. Shiva is pure consciousness, the ground of all being; Parvati is Shakti (Śakti), the energy that becomes the entire manifest cosmos. Together they are the whole of what exists, so to go around them is to go around everything.

Kartikeya returns

Kartikeya came back at last, having actually circled the actual universe — which takes time, even for a god on a swift peacock. He found his brother already holding the prize and his parents plainly proud of their younger son’s understanding.

Kartikeya was not pleased.

In many versions, his displeasure opens a longer story about the two brothers, their different relationships with their parents and their different domains. Kartikeya leaves Kailasa and goes south. There he becomes the most beloved deity of the Tamil tradition as Murugan — powerful and proud, worshipped at his temples with a devotion as fierce as any in the Hindu world.

Tamil retellings link this departure to Palani, one of Murugan’s most important hill shrines, where he is worshipped as a young renunciant who has given up everything. A popular explanation of the name says Parvati and Shiva followed him there and consoled him with the words pazham nī — “you yourself are the fruit”. This is a traditional folk explanation of the name rather than a historical one. In the Śiva Purāṇa, the hurt son withdraws instead to the Krauñca mountain.

So the race is also the backstory for Kartikeya’s leaving home, which means the story does not end simply with one brother winning and the other losing. Many devotees who love Murugan hear it as a story of two paths rather than a winner and a loser: the brother who looks within, and the brother who goes out into the world and makes his own seat there.

What the story is often taken to mean

The tale is simple, but it is read on several levels. Here are some of the common understandings, offered as interpretations rather than as fixed doctrine:

• Insight over effort. Kartikeya’s way is speed and strength. Ganesha’s way is to understand what is really being asked. The story is often used to say that seeing clearly can accomplish what effort alone cannot.
• The source contains the whole. Beyond the outcome, what stays with listeners is the moment of circling itself: the large-bellied son of the destroyer walking slowly around his parents and saying, with complete simplicity, that this was enough. The divine that gives rise to all things is worth more than all the things it gives rise to. To circle the source is to honour the whole universe.
• Honouring parents. At a more everyday level, the story is told to teach reverence for one’s mother and father. Many families use it this way, and the Śiva Purāṇa’s emphasis on the merit of circling one’s parents supports that reading.
• The meaning of pradakshina. The story gives a reason for a practice many Hindus perform without thinking: walking around the shrine. Circling a deity is understood as placing that deity at the centre of one’s life.

Some readers find Ganesha’s answer a little too clever — a loophole rather than a victory. The tradition does not see it that way. The contest was only ever meant to be won by whoever understood where the universe truly lies.

Where the story comes from

The episode of the brothers’ contest is told in the Śiva Purāṇa, in the section concerned with Kartikeya and Ganesha, where the prize is the right to be married first. The version with the fruit of wisdom brought by Narada is especially popular in South India and in Tamil devotional tradition, and it is the form most people meet in picture books, films and temple storytelling. Details — the prize, the number of rounds, how quickly Shiva and Parvati agree, where Kartikeya goes afterwards — change from one telling to another. None of these versions should be treated as the only “correct” one.

Why he is invoked first

Ganesha is worshipped first, before any other deity, at the start of a puja (ritual worship) and before new undertakings. The best-known explanation for this comes from the story of how he received his elephant head, when the gods granted him the honour of first worship. But devotees often connect the race to the same custom, and the logic is similar: honour the remover of obstacles, who is also the wisdom that sees the whole, and the rest of the journey becomes possible.

Circle the source. Everything else will wait.

Read on AdiVeda

• How Ganesha Came to Wear the Elephant’s Head — the story behind his form and his place as the first to be worshipped.
• How Ganesha Got His Mouse: The Story of Musaka — the small vehicle that could never have won this race.
• The General of the Gods: Kartikeya and the War with Tarakasura — the other brother’s great story.
• Ganesha reading texts — stotras, mantras and prayers to Ganesha.
• Pragya Vivardhana Kartikeya Stotram — a hymn to Kartikeya.