In
Hinduism,
Parvati (alt. spelling:
Parvatti) is a goddess of
mountains and an alternate form of
Shakti. She is married to
Shiva. Shiva and Parvati are the parents of
Karttikeya and
Ganesha, the
elephant-headed god of wisdom. He acquired his head due to the actions of Shiva, who decapitated him because Ganesha refused to allow him to enter the bath while Parvati was bathing. Shiva had to give him the new head to placate his wife. In another version, Parvati showed the child off to Shiva, whose face burned his head to ashes, which
Brahma told Shiva to replace with the first head he came across - and that just happened to be that of an
elephant.
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