Manasa is the serpent goddess of Bengal, Assam and the eastern regions, invoked above all against snakebite, and with it for fertility and household protection. In lands of rivers and monsoon floodwater, where the snake is a daily hazard, she has for centuries been among the most widely worshipped of deities, and she is the heroine, imperious and finally triumphant, of one of Bengali literature's foundational works, the Manasamangal.
Origins and kin
Her mythology joins several strands. The Puranic and epic frame makes her sister of the serpent king Vasuki, wife of the sage Jaratkaru and mother of Astika, who halted King Janamejaya's great snake sacrifice and saved the serpent race. She is also called Padmavati and Bishahari, the destroyer of poison. Bengali folk tellings give her a harder story: a daughter of Shiva born outside his marriage, resented by his wife Chandi, one-eyed from her stepmother's blow, and driven to win from an unwilling world the worship she was denied by birth.
The Manasamangal
That demand is the plot of the Manasamangal poems. The rich merchant Chand Sadagar, a staunch devotee of Shiva, refuses the upstart goddess his worship; she wrecks his ships and kills his sons by snakebite. His last son, Lakhindar, is bitten on his wedding night inside an iron bridal chamber built to keep every serpent out. The bride Behula floats downriver on the raft bearing her husband's body, endures every trial, and wins from the gods his restoration, on condition that Chand yield. He does, grudgingly, offering flowers with his left hand and face averted; Manasa accepts, and her worship is established. Behula's fidelity made her a byword in Bengal, and the tale has been sung, recited and staged for centuries.
Worship
Manasa's worship swells in the monsoon months, when snakes are driven from their holes. She is often honoured without an image, in a branch of the sij cactus, an earthen pot, or a clay shrine, though images show her enthroned under a canopy of hooded serpents. In Assam she is worshipped as Bishahari or Maroi, and her cult there sustains the ojapali tradition of narrative song and dance. Across the region her festivals remain living village occasions rather than antiquarian survivals.
Further reading
- Bhattacharyya, N. N. History of the Sakta Religion. Munshiram Manoharlal, 1996
- Dimock, Edward C. The Place of the Hidden Moon. University of Chicago Press, 1966
- Kinsley, David. Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine. University of California Press, 1986
- Kinsley, David. Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Mahavidyas. University of California Press, 1997
- McDermott, Rachel Fell. Revelry, Rivalry, and Longing for the Goddesses of Bengal. Columbia University Press, 2011
See also
This entry was last revised on 31 July 2026.