Ashtavinayak -- The Eight Ganesha Shrines of Maharashtra

In Maharashtra, where Ganesha is loved more widely perhaps than anywhere else, the greatest pilgrimage to him is a circuit of eight temples, most of them within a day's drive of Pune. They are the Ashtavinayak, "the eight Vinayakas". Each houses an image of Ganesha held to be svayambhu -- self-manifested, not carved by human hands but found as it is -- and each has its own legend of how Ganesha came to dwell there, often to bless a devotee or to slay a demon.

The pilgrimage has a traditional order. It begins at Morgaon, visits the other seven, and returns to Morgaon to close the circle. Many pilgrims make it in two or three days by road; others take it slowly over a longer time, as a vow.

The legends behind the eight are told in the Ganesha Purana and the Mudgala Purana, the two Puranas of the Ganapatya tradition, and in local temple histories. Several show Ganesha as the one whom even the great gods must honour before success: Vishnu at Siddhatek before fighting the demons Madhu and Kaitabha, Shiva at Ranjangaon before destroying the three cities of Tripurasura. Others show his love for simple devotees, like the boy Ballal of Pali, beaten by his father for worshipping Ganesha in the forest, to whom Ganesha appeared and stayed.

Many of the temples owe their present buildings to the Peshwas, the eighteenth-century Maratha rulers who were devoted Ganesha worshippers, and to the saint Moraya Gosavi of Chinchwad, a great devotee whose name lives on in the chant every Maharashtrian knows: "Ganapati Bappa Morya!"

The Ashtavinayak circuit is busiest during Ganesh Chaturthi and on Sankashti Chaturthi, the monthly fourth day of the waning moon sacred to Ganesha, and on Angarki Chaturthi when that day falls on a Tuesday. The images are simple -- in most, Ganesha is a rounded rock form smeared with orange sindoor, his eyes set with gems -- and that simplicity is part of their power. The pilgrim is not visiting eight works of art but eight places where, devotees believe, Ganesha chose to make himself present.