A cast bronze figure of the elephant-headed god Ganesha, son of Siva and Parvati. Ganesha is also called Ganapati 'The remover of Obstacles' and is worshipped at the start of a ritual or beginning of a journey. His obesity contains the whole universe, his trunk is bent to remove obstacles and his four arms hold his attributes.
A good, relatively large typical southern Indian sitting Ganesha. In his upper hands he holds an elephant goad (ankusha) and a slightly damaged attribute that may be a noose (pasha). His trunk dips to his lower left hand, which holds the sweets that he loves and his lower right hand holds his broken tusk, with which he is said to have written the Mahabharata. A cobra wraps round his belly but his rat vahana is missing. The flat base below the well-modelled lotus probably fitted into a shrine base, which may have featured the rat. Good copper colour, moderate wear. The brassy siraschakra behind his head is riveted in place and may be a replacement.