Ganesh Purana - origin of the story

Lord Ganesha is all powerful deity and is worshipped universally by one and all. To understand his greatness one must study the Ganesha purana about the uniqueness he possess.    He is the one God who has maximum temples across our country and abroad. He is seen in most of the bank of rivers under a peepal tree and every nook and corner of streets and roads. When you visit a temple he sits at the entrance and all of salute to him before going to the main deity.

I am going to write about how our ancient sages explained the significance of his worship. He is considered as a person who removes all obstacles we face and also bless us.

Many sages went to meet Lord Brahma at satyaloka. The sages asked the Lord to show them a suitable place where they can worship without any problem. Lord Brahma too the darbha grass and made a wheel out of it and rolled on the ground. He then asked the sages to follow the wheel and said that when the wheel stops that would be the right place for them to do their penance and prayers

The w heel stopped at a place Naimisharanya where the sages, saints and scholars used to do austerities and rituals. In this spot sage Shaunaka started a yajnya and it was attended by all saints across the world. One of the sage who attended this ritual was sage Sudhama who was a learned one as he had learnt all the puranas numbering eighteen. As all sages wanted to spend twelve years in this place they asked Sudhama to tell them about the importance of the puranas. These mahapuranas were given by Lord Shiva to Nandideva.

Nandideva then taught these puranas to sage Sanat kumara. Sanat Kumar passed on this knowledge to Sage Vyasa. The puranas were in shloka form, which spread across the worlds. The sages after learning, they then sub divided to eighteen sub-puranas. They then converted these slokas into short poems so that the future generation will be able to sing and understand easily.

One of the important of the sub-purana is the Bhargava purana which deals with Lord Ganesha.

Sage Vyasa inculcated all the knowledge to sage Bhrigu. Sage Bhrigu then classified the purana into two one he called the Upasana kandam and the other Leela Kandam. Each kandam has 250 chapters.

Sage Sudhama started to narrate the greatness of Lord Vinayaka and how one should worship him.  

He explains to the saints how the devotees  who prayed to the Lord attained bliss.