1900.] Hara Prasad Shastri— Exhibition of a Turquois Qanega. 69 



years a round sum would be in hand to meet the cost of repainting and 

 colour- washing-, and any structural repairs that might become necessary. 

 Rs. 1,000 yearly would, in my opinion, fully cover any ordinary re-de- 

 coration and repairs, and would, I think, leave over a substantial balance 

 at the end of every four or jBve years to meet any unforeseen expendi- 

 ture. 



Mahamahopadhyaya Hara Prasad Shastri exhibited and described 

 a Turquois Ganepa, and made the following remarks on it. 



On the 6th February Mr. Hill, Librarian to the Imperial Library 

 wrote to me a letter, enclosing a drawing from a carved piece of 

 Turquois belonging to the Under-Secretary, Revenue and Agricultural 

 Department, and expressing a hope that I might furnish him with an 

 explanation of the details. 



On examination the drawing proved to be that of Gane9a with the 

 following curious features: (1) he has four faces; he rides on a lion ; 

 he has a Qakti on his left in an amorous position ; his legs are short 

 and thick set. 



The figure of Gane9a, as we ordinarily find it, has one face, the 

 head of an elephant; with a proboscis, a pot-belley, with two, 

 sometimes with four hands, painted bright red with one tusk, 

 riding on a rat. In the grand image of Durga and her family wor- 

 shipped in October we find a plantain tree placed by the side of Ganega 

 covered over with a bright red-bordered cloth, ordinarily called ^^r^ 

 (the wife of Gane9a represented by a plantain tree) ; but really it is 

 not intended as Gane9a's mate. It is in Sanskrit called sr^^f^^r, nine 

 leaves, the real essence of Durga. 



The drawing differs so greatly from our ordinary idea of Gane9a 

 that I began searching on all sides for an explanation of the distin- 

 guishing features, and this was furnished from the Commentary by 

 Raghava Bhatta on Qaradatilaka, a well-known Tantrika work, in which 

 50 names of Gane9a and 50 names of his Qaktis are given. Most 

 of these names are names taken from his attributes, and two of 

 these names are important for our purposes, namely, ?Tfi«rT'^«r and 

 W^^. The first epithet means that he rides sometimes on an infuriated 

 animal and the second says he often has six heads. Now the word 

 ir=fT may mean any infuriated animal and in the drawing the lion with 

 its mouth gaping wide open and with tail raised high up seems to be 

 in fury. This furnished explanation on one of the points of detail. 

 The other epithet " with six heads " explains the fact that in the draw- 

 ing, Gane9a has only four ; because six heads all round, will show 



