Gajasura: Dancing on What Tried to Kill You
The origin of the gajacharma iconography
An elephant-headed demon charges into Kashi to crush a gathering of Shiva-bhaktas. Shiva rises from the inner sanctum, splits him in a single stroke, and puts on the hide. The Krittivasas, the elephant-skin robe, is not a trophy. The lesson reads it as what Shiva does with what tries to destroy him.
A Charge Into Kashi
It is late afternoon at the Manikarnika ghat in Kashi, sometime in the deep Puranic age. The sun is sliding low over the Ganga. A group of about a hundred Shiva-bhaktas have gathered for the evening arati outside the inner sanctum of the lord. They are householders, weavers, ascetics, a few children. They have brought small lamps of ghee and folded their hands.
Far to the south of the city, in a forest where no one walks, a creature is rising. He is the size of a small hill. His head is the head of an elephant, but his body is the body of an asura: thick-skinned, two-armed, with red eyes that have not slept in many years. His name is Gajasura.
He has just received a boon from Brahma. The boon is that no weapon shall pierce him, no fire shall burn him, no water shall drown him. He has tested the boon on smaller villages and found it good. Now he wants the city of Shiva. He wants the lord whose name the bhaktas have been singing. He wants to crush the singers and walk over the temple. The Shiva Purana is precise about why. 'If the lord they sing of is real,' he tells himself as he begins to walk, 'let him stop me.'
The trees of the forest snap as he passes through. Birds rise in panic. The earth cracks under his weight. The ascetics by the riverbank hear him before they see him. They turn and run for the temple. The mothers gather their children. The children begin to cry. The lamps for the arati are still in their hands.
What the bhaktas at Kashi did next, and what Shiva did when he heard their cry, is the subject of this lesson. At the end of it, the lord will be wearing the demon's skin like a shawl, dancing on what tried to kill the people who loved him. The image is one of the strangest in the entire Shaiva iconography. The teaching it carries is one of the most direct.