Puranic Stories · Other Puranas & Sacred Texts
A story told in some regional traditions holds that the great churning of the cosmic ocean, Samudra Manthan, came to a complete halt because the assembled Devas forgot to invoke Shree Ganesh first, a claim this collection could not confirm in the major textual accounts of that episode.
A Story Consistent With a Real Principle
Whatever its precise textual standing, this story fits naturally within the well-established principle of Pratham Pujya, told fully elsewhere in this collection through Shiva's own broken chariot axle: that any undertaking, however cosmic in scale, is understood to require Shree Ganesh's blessing first.
Devotional Imagination Extending a Known Truth
This account reads most honestly as devotional storytelling extending an already firmly established principle into the grandest event Hindu cosmology describes: imagining, in the spirit of genuine faith, that even the churning that produced the nectar of immortality could not proceed without him.
What Devotees Seek
Devotees who cherish this story take from it the same lesson found throughout this entire collection, regardless of its precise textual origin: that no undertaking, however small or however vast, is ever truly too great to begin without first turning to Shree Ganesh.