What Gaṇa of Gaṇapati or Gaṇeśa means

Today is Gaṇeśa caturthi. The ten days of our annual Gaṇapati sādhanā begins. Gaṇapati, or Gaṇeśa, is a devatā we all hold dear, and it is an auspicious day to contemplate what he brings us.

The Gaṇapati Atharvaśīrṣa is a short upaniṣad from the Atharva Veda, chanted widely in temples and homes and during the Gaṇeśa festival. Its sections are called anuvākas. The seventh of them sets out Gaṇapati’s bīja or seed mantra sound by sound. A seed mantra holds the devatā’s energy in potential, and like any seed, when it is nourished in the right conditions it germinates and comes to full flowering.

gaṇapati is gaṇa + pati. gaṇeśa is gaṇa + īśa. Both name the one who presides over the gaṇas.

gaṇa is a group, a class, a collection, a category. We do not meet the world as millions of unrelated objects. We make sense of it by forming groups: kingdoms, species, families, types. Animal and plant. Mammals, birds, reptiles. Herbs, trees, grains. Each of these is a gaṇa, and Gaṇapati presides over every one of them.

The syllable ga

The seventh anuvāka unfolds the seed mantra gaṃ for us. It begins with the first sound of the word gaṇa.

gaṇādiṃ pūrvamuccārya varṇādiṃ tadanantaram | anusvāraḥ parataraḥ | ardhendulasitam |

Pronounce first the beginning sound of the word gaṇa, then the first of the vowels immediately after it. The anusvāra follows, embellished with a half crescent.

That sound is ga, and ga carries movement across the Sanskrit language. gacchati, he goes. gamanam, going. gata, that which has gone. gati, movement, path, and also destiny. āgama, what has come down to us. saṅgama, a coming together.

How the text builds the mantra

gakāraḥ pūrvarūpam | akāro madhyamarūpam | anusvāraścāntyarūpam |

The consonant g comes first (gakāraḥ, the pūrvarūpam or first form), the vowel a in the middle (akāraḥ, the madhyamarūpam), and the nasal sound written with a dot above the letter comes last (anusvāraḥ, the antyarūpam). Sounded together as one syllable, these three give gaṃ. The text then says tāreṇa ṛddham, that it is made rich by the tāra, which is oṃ. So oṃ is placed before it, the salutation to Gaṇapati follows, and the mantra stands complete.

oṃ gaṃ gaṇapataye namaḥ

The tenth anuvāka salutes Gaṇapati as vighnavināśin, the one who destroys obstacles. An obstacle is whatever stops movement. The sound at the head of his mantra is the sound of movement. When we chant it we are asking for that movement in ourselves, for what is stuck to loosen and for the way ahead to open.

This is what we chant each day for the ten days of our Gaṇapati Sādhanā.