Shiva

Parvati, the mountain's daughter, grew weary of Shiva's endless asceticism. She waited patiently beside him in adoration, but lost in his meditation at a hermitage by the meeting of two rivers, Shiva did not notice her at all. To draw him out of it, the gods sent Kama, the god of love, and his wife Pleasure, one spring day. Kama found his chance as Parvati came forward to worship Shiva, and he aimed his flower arrows at him.

For a moment, Menon's rendering has Shiva fall under the arrow's spell and reach for Parvati before he catches what has happened, turns, and finds Kama hiding nearby. By contrast, Larousse has Shiva see Kama the instant before the arrow leaves the bow and does not wait to be struck at all. Either way, Shiva opened his third eye, and its flash consumed the god of love where he stood, burning him to ash. Menon's rendering says the wind scattered what was left of him.

The accounts then diverge. In Larousse, a voice promises Pleasure that Shiva will restore Kama’s body after marrying Parvati. Coleman instead says that Kama is reborn as Pradyumna, son of Krishna and Rukmini. In Larousse’s telling, the burned god is called Ananga, the one deprived of limbs.

When the gods held a great sacrifice, they shared out its offerings among themselves and left no share for Rudra, though they knew him and his nature well. Rudra would not accept the slight. He made himself a bow from the elements, five cubits long, meaning to take a share by force, and with an arrow from it he shot the sacrifice itself through the heart.

The wounded sacrifice took the shape of a deer and ran, carrying its own fire with it into the sky, and Rudra chased it through the heavens. The gods watching lost their wits entirely. Using the curved end of his bow, Rudra tore off Savita's arms, gouged out Bhaga's eyes, and broke out Pushana's teeth. The rest of the gods fled with what was left of the sacrifice, and he drove them off and laughed. He used the ends of his bow to trap and hold them where they stood, until the gods cried out in terror and his own bowstring snapped.

In the end the gods came to him, together with what remained of the sacrifice, and begged him for shelter. Once his anger had cooled, he restored the sacrifice whole again. Because of what he did that day, the gods have been afraid of him ever since.

In Chapter 1300(17) of Debroy's Volume 8 translation of the Mahabharata, Brahma asks Rudra to create beings. Rudra sees that beings will have defects, so the immensely ascetic god submerges himself in water and gives himself to austerities. Brahma waits, then creates another being through his mental powers. That being creates seven Prajapatis, including Daksha. The seven Prajapatis create the four kinds of beings. The new beings are hungry and rush at the Prajapatis, hoping to devour them. The Prajapatis flee to Brahma and ask him for protection and a means of sustenance. He assigns them the forests, the herbs and all immobile objects, while the strong among mobile beings may feed on the weak. Satisfied, the beings return to their places and multiply within their own kinds.

When the beings prosper, Brahma is pleased. Rudra then rises from the waters and sees many kinds of beings extending through their own energies. They have been created without him. In anger he plants his linga so that it penetrates the earth and remains fixed there. Brahma tries to pacify him and asks why he stayed in the water so long and why he made the linga enter the earth. Rudra answers that someone else has created the beings, leaving him nothing to do. He tells Brahma that his own austerities have created food for beings, and that the herbs and beings will continue to multiply. Still cheerless, Rudra leaves and resumes his austerities on the foothills of Mount Munjavat.

David Leeming's Oxford Companion recounts a version from the Brhaddharma Purana. Parvati wanted a child, but Shiva mocked the wish. He was a yogi-ascetic and an immortal who had no need of descendants. When he saw how unhappy his wife was, he agreed, while keeping his distance from the child's conception. He tore a piece from Parvati's dress and told her to make the baby from it. She did so, and the child soon nursed at her breasts.

Shiva then took a dislike to the child. A curse, Shiva's evil gaze, or Shiva's direct act is given as the cause of the decapitation. Shiva could not restore the detached head to the body, so he sent Nandin, his bull attendant, to find another. Nandin took the head of Indra's elephant Airavata after a terrible struggle with Indra and the other gods. Shiva placed that elephant head on Parvati's son. The child was now short and fat, with a red face, but he was beautiful in a deeper sense.

He was named Ganesh, Lord of his father's hosts, by Brahma and was given a rat as his mount. The entry also names him as Vyasa's scribe for the Mahabharata.