South-Indian Images of Gods and Goddesses c9.s17.8

c9.s17.8

³ Babu Nagendra Natha Vasu in his Mayūrabhanja states that Vināyaka is worshipped even by the Buddhists, the Japanese calling him Binayakia. He refers to a temple of Ganēsa in Nepal which is supposed to have been built by a daughter of the Maurya king Asōka in the third century B.C. Dr. Bhandarkar (Vaishnavism, Saivism, etc., p. 147 f.) gives the sixth century to be the earliest date when Ganapati as the elephant-headed god, came to be generally worshipped by the Hindus.