Excellent point Rick, and it makes our interpretation of these culture-specific deity forms so difficult. We need a cultural historian from within the host culture of this specimen to interpret this particular form. What may have started centuries ago as a Ganesha representation has morphed into something (or someone) that is barely recognisable as the original. Certainly this form is not how Ganesha's representation has developed over time in more mainstream Hindu settings.

I dont know about Indonesia but I found the Nepalese Hindus were very comfterble with the morphing of Gods & thier symbols, to the point where if something could appear to be 2 religious icons or symbols at the same time, that was excelent, much better than one & would carry more power or luck.

They didnt seem to have the same western need for exact classification & sub classification that many of us are used to.

Would the Indonesian have a similar relaxed & accepting nature, I wonder?

Spiral :D

I realised that the different deities would look different from place to place, but I did not realise that the iconography would be different from place to place. However if you insist, I will bow my head and hurry to bring some links to Balinese Ganesha’s.

Balinese Ganesha http://www.geocities.com/keris4u/han...ood_ganesh.htm

http://www.hofstra.edu/COM/Museum/mu...melanesian.cfm here you, amongst other can read this text: ‘A few figures in the exhibition at Hofstra exemplify a substyle of the more prevalent New Guinea/Sepik artistic language, and that is the "Beak," a regional variation of the lower Sepik and environs. In these areas, a figure's nose descends into a prominent tip occasionally reaching to the chin or further into the lower anatomy. Complimentary to this distinctive representation of nose is narrowing of the face along a perpendicular axis with corresponding slanting eyes. Lost in history is the reason for this unique facial appearance; over the current century, Western scholars have postulated the nose "beak" as a sign of clan identification with the totem hornbill bird or as a provincial adaptation of the Hindu/Balinese Ganesha elephantine god of wisdom and scholarship.

Here is another one http://www.symbiosys.nl/wink/E_art_176.html

And a lot of different Ganesha’s from different places http://www.symbiosys.nl/wink/E_noframes.html

Well , I think I have said about all that I can on this subject .

In parting I do have a comment on this link :
http://www.symbiosys.nl/wink/E_noframes.html

I strongly believe that the Balinese Ganesha carvings offered here and at other sites such as Novica have been carved to accomodate Western tastes and as such are a departure from traditional Balinese carving .

Rick, I am out too, but I have a last comment. You may be right about the Balinese carving tradition on these figures, but what I was more interested in was the iconography, not the carving technique.

I guess we may be on the same page here Jens but I am not quite positive .
The figures in the links presented lack the typical Balinese embellishments as are seen on the keris handles we have discussed ; so I see them as not really Balinese in nature . :)

Recently finished on eBay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=7332028583

Seems to be a somewhat more conventional representation with respect to the trunk, although the hand postures are atypical. This one does not strike me as being very old.

Ian.