Before the next real post, I thought I should draw your attention to a variant of the excerpt in "A paradoxical doxology 1" that I came across in a couple of Vijayanagara inscriptions (of the reign of Tirumala I and Ranga Raya II). It differs from said verse only in the last quarter: instead of harinaapi cha poojyate (हरिणापि च पूज्यते), it reads panchaasyenaapi laalitam (पञ्चास्येनापि लालितम्) which means "caressed by a lion/caressed by Shiva", [panchaasya = panchaanana = "five-faced", literally]. The exegesis of this version is quite understandably similar to that of the second quote in the same vein (A paradoxical doxology 2).
Another point to be noted is that all adjectives used to describe Ganesha in both versions of the stanza under consideration are in the neuter gender. This is because Ganesha is referred to as gajaratna ("a gem of an elephant"/"an excellent elephant"); the grammatical gender of ratna ("gem") in Sanskrit is neuter, and in Sanskrit grammar, an adjective has the same gender, number, and case-ending as the noun it qualifies. This rule is quite convenient, especially in poetry, since an adjective can be placed practically anywhere in a sentence and yet it is possible to figure out precisely, more often than not, which noun it is associated with! Thus the sentence
सुशीलः बालकः उष्णं दुग्धं पिबति|
(The well-behaved boy drinks warm milk.)can be rewritten as
उष्णं पिबति सुशीलः दुग्धं बालकः|without changing its meaning. (Of course, it is possible to construct pathological examples where this idea breaks down. )
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