Ganesha is among the most widely worshipped deities in India and is invoked at the beginning of undertakings, journeys, business ventures and texts, the remover of obstacles, and in some framings their placer as well. He is worshipped across sectarian lines, by Shaivas, Vaishnavas and others, and outside India in Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Java, Bali and Japan, where he appears as Kangiten. The stories of how he acquired the elephant head vary, the best-known being that Shiva beheaded him without recognising him and replaced the head with the first available. Ganesha's presence in the archaeological and textual record becomes prominent from about the fourth or fifth century CE, which makes him a relatively late arrival among major deities.
Airavata is the white elephant mount of Indra, produced at the churning of the ocean, and the ancestor of all elephants in some accounts.
Buddhism. Queen Maya dreams of a white elephant entering her right side before the birth of the Buddha, an episode depicted from the earliest Buddhist narrative art at Bharhut and Sanchi. The elephant also appears as the mind in the Tibetan taming-the-elephant diagrams, where its colour lightens as meditation progresses.
White elephants are royal property in Thailand, Burma, Laos and Cambodia, possession of them indicating the legitimacy and merit of a ruler; they are rare albino or pale animals identified by specific criteria. The English phrase for a burdensome useless gift derives from the story that a Burmese or Siamese king would present one to a courtier he wished to ruin, since the animal could not be worked or disposed of and had to be maintained. The story is repeated everywhere and is not well attested in Southeast Asian sources; treat the phrase as real and its origin story as folklore.