Gana (Ganas)

Region/Culture: South Asia
Mythos: Hindu Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings
Mythical Attributes: A swarming host of dwarfish, often grotesque spirit-beings who serve as the troops, doorkeepers, and emissaries of Shiva.
Role in Mythos: They are the attendant army of Shiva, dwelling on Mount Kailash under the command of Ganesha, whose very name, Ganapati, means lord of the ganas.
Relation to Humans: Born of the cremation grounds and the wild margins where Shiva wanders, the ganas unsettle mortals far more often than they help them, the visible face of the disorder that ascetic power keeps at its heel. Yet to belong to their lord is to fall under their rough guard, and the same horde that terrifies a wedding party also stands watch at the threshold of the divine.

The bride’s people came out to meet the groom and then wished they had stayed indoors. Down the mountain road came no prince. A near-naked ascetic rode toward them smeared grey with ash, a serpent at his throat, mounted on a white bull, and behind him spilled a crowd that sent the women of the household reeling back through their own gates. The newcomers were short, most of them, knee-high to gut-high, fitted with the wrong number of arms and faces lifted from animals. Some carried no head at all and watched from eyes set in their chests. They howled and lurched and rattled strings of bone, and they had dressed up, in their fashion, for a wedding.

This is the host of Shiva, and the word for them is gana. In Sanskrit it means a troop, a multitude, a tribe, a countable host, and that plainness is the point: they are less a species than a crowd. They live on Mount Kailash at the cold roof of the world, attending the great ascetic in the long stretches when he sits unmoving, and they answer to a single commander. Shiva set his own son over them, the elephant-headed Ganesha, whose title Ganapati says exactly what he is, lord of the ganas. Below him the white bull Nandi is counted chief of the host, and the rest follow as a horde follows, by noise and by numbers.

No two of them look the same, which is the nearest thing they have to a uniform. The texts pile up adjectives rather than measurements: dwarfish, pot-bellied, hunched, with faces borrowed from beasts and limbs that do not match. One has tusks, another a snout, another too many eyes and not enough sense to hide them. They range from the merely odd to the openly monstrous, and their temperaments run the same span, some mild and devoted, others malevolent and half-mad. They are not built to be looked at. They are built to be felt, as a pressure at the edge of the firelight, a shuffling in the dark past the burning ghats.

Where they came from is bound up with where Shiva spends his time. Many of the ganas are bhutaganas, spirits of the dead drawn from the cremation grounds, which is why they smell of ash and woodsmoke and keep to the places ordinary worship avoids. Shiva in his aspect as Bhutanath is their lord precisely because he is lord of ghosts, and the horde is his court. The word reaches further back still. In the oldest hymns of the Rigveda the storm-gods called the Maruts are named a gana, a roaring band that rides the wind, so the idea of a divine troop that arrives as chaos rather than order is older than Shiva’s particular crowd.

Their commander earned his post in blood. Parvati, Shiva’s wife, fashioned a boy from the substance of her own body and set him to guard her door while she bathed. When Shiva returned and the boy refused him entry, not knowing his father, Shiva struck off his head. To quiet Parvati’s grief he replaced it with the head of the first creature found, an elephant, and the restored child was crowned before the assembled gods as leader of the ganas. There is an older logic underneath the tenderness. A horde of unruly spirits needs a master strong enough to hold it, and the host got one who had already died once and come back changed.

The host’s defining hour came at the sacrifice of Daksha. When Shiva’s first wife Sati threw herself into her father’s sacrificial fire, humiliated on his account, Shiva’s grief turned to fury. He tore a single matted lock of his hair and dashed it to the ground, and from it rose Virabhadra, a gana of terrible size with a thousand arms and burning eyes, leading the whole screaming host behind him. They fell on Daksha’s grand ceremony like a storm breaking a roof. They scattered the priests, overturned the offerings, and Virabhadra took Daksha’s head clean off. Only after the wreckage was total did Shiva relent and revive the dead man, fitting him with a goat’s head for the rest of his days.

What the ganas can do follows from what they are. They are Shiva’s strength made into a crowd, capable of guarding the unreachable mountain, carrying his will into the world, and overrunning anything their lord points them at. They are numberless and tireless, at home in the wild and the graveyard where no god of order would set foot. A single gana is little. Ten thousand of them moving at once are an army that gods have learned to fear.

What they cannot do follows just as plainly. They have almost no will of their own apart from Shiva’s. They wait when he is still and rage when he is roused, and left to themselves they amount to grotesque mischief, a horde of capering oddities good for frightening a wedding party and not much more. They are not gods. They are what gods keep around them, and their whole greatness is borrowed from the figure they surround.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the Ganas in Hindu mythology?

The Ganas are a host of attendant spirit-beings who serve the god Shiva and live with him on Mount Kailash. They function as his troops, doorkeepers, and messengers, and are often described as dwarfish, grotesque creatures with animal features and mismatched limbs.

Who is the leader of the Ganas?

The leader of the Ganas is Ganesha, Shiva’s elephant-headed son, whose title Ganapati literally means “lord of the ganas.” He was crowned over the host by the gods after Shiva beheaded and then revived him with an elephant’s head. The bull Nandi is also counted as a chief among the ganas.

What do the Ganas look like?

The Ganas are typically described as short, pot-bellied, and deliberately misshapen, with faces taken from animals, extra or missing limbs, bulging eyes, and wild hair. No two are alike, and their forms range from merely odd to openly monstrous, matching temperaments that run from devoted to malevolent.

What is the connection between the Ganas and cremation grounds?

Many Ganas are bhutaganas, spirits of the dead drawn from cremation grounds, which is why they are associated with ash, ghosts, and the places ordinary worship avoids. They serve Shiva in his aspect as Bhutanath, the lord of ghosts and spirits.

What role did the Ganas play at Daksha’s sacrifice?

When Sati died at her father Daksha’s sacrifice, Shiva created the mighty gana Virabhadra from a lock of his hair and sent him with the whole host to destroy the ceremony. The Ganas scattered the priests and wrecked the offerings, and Virabhadra beheaded Daksha, who was later revived by Shiva with the head of a goat.