only on the condition that Vyasa recite the poem uninterrupted, without pausing. The sage, in his turn, posed the condition that Ganesha would not only have to write, but would have to understand everything that he heard before writing it down. In this way, Vyasa might recuperate a bit from his continuous talking by simply reciting a difficult verse which Ganesha could not understand. The dictation began, but in the rush of writing Ganesha's feather pen broke. He broke off a tusk and used it as a pen so that the transcription could proceed without interruption, permitting him to keep his word. This is the single passage in which Ganesha appears in that epic. The story is not accepted as part of the original text by the editors of the critical edition of the Mahabharata, where the twenty-line story is relegated to a footnote to an appendix. Ganesha's association with mental agility and learning is probably one reason he is shown as scribe for Vyasa's dictation of the Mahabharata in this interpolation to the text. Brown dates the story as 8th century CE, and Moriz Winternitz concludes that it was known as early as c. 900 CE but he maintains that it had not yet been added to the Mahabharata some 150 years later. Winternitz also drew attention to the fact that a distinctive feature of Southern manuscripts of the Mahabharata is their omission of this Ganesha legend. Ganesha and Parashurama One day, Parashurama, an avatar of Vishnu, went to pay a visit to Shiva, but along the way he was blocked by Ganesha. Parashurama hurled himself at Ganesha with his axe and Ganesha (knowing that this axe was given to him by Shiva) allowed himself, out of respect for his father, to be struck and lost his tusk as a result. By this lord Ganesha yells out of pain and goddess Parvati comes running out from the cave. She, looking at the condition of her son asks Kartikeya what happened. When she learns about Parashurama and that he was the reason for the axing off of one of the tusks of her beloved son lord Ganesha, she assumes the form of Goddess Kali and threatens to slay the sage for his actions. At that time, Parashurama remembers lord Krishna. deity Vishnu goes to that place and disguised himself as a small brahmin boy. Later he tells lord Shiva that