The Triumph of the Snake Goddess

Snakes exist in the myths of most societies often embodying magical mysterious forces. Snake cults were especially important in eastern India and Bangladesh where for centuries worshippers of the indigenous snake goddess Manasa resisted the competing religious influences of Indo-Europeans and Muslims. The result was a corpus of verse texts narrating Manasa’s struggle to win universal adoration. The Triumph of the Snake Goddess is the first comprehensive retelling of this epic tale in modern English. Scholar and poet Kaiser Haq offers a composite prose translation of Manasa’s story based on five extant versions. Following the tradition of mangalkavyas―Bengali verse narratives celebrating the deeds of deities in order to win their blessings―the tale opens with a creation myth and a synopsis of Indian mythology zooming in on Manasa the miraculous child of the god Shiva. Manasa easily wins the allegiance of everyone except the wealthy merchant Chand who holds fast in his devotion to Shiva despite seeing his sons massacred. A celestial couple is incarnated on earth to fulfill Manasa’s design: Behula wife to one of Chand’s slain sons undertakes a harrowing odyssey to restore him to life with Manasa’s help ultimately persuading Chand to bow to the snake goddess. A prologue by Haq explores the Bengali oral poetic and manuscript traditions behind this Hindu folk epic―a vibrant part of popular Bengali culture Hindu and Muslim to this day―and an introduction by Wendy Doniger examines the history and significance of snake worship in classical Sanskrit texts. . Review . In The Triumph of the Snake Goddess Haq provides an informative and authoritative introduction to the Manasa traditions of premodern Bengal while creating a highly readable composite narrative of his own. The text is further animated by Doniger’s introduction which vividly situates the regional particularities of Manasa against the pan-Indian mythic backdrop. (Brian A. Hatcher Tufts University) . Both an impeccable scholarly venture and a sparklingly imaginative literary work in its own right Kaiser Haq’s composite edition―and brilliant translation―of Manasamangal tells the gripping (and frequently hilarious) story of Manasa the snake-goddess and the contestation of a minor deity’s rights and privileges by a human. Manasa reminds us of the stubborn immortality of the folk and the non-canonical when faced with the literary and canonical. This is a revelatory fascinating and compelling book. (Neel Mukherjee author of The Lives of Others)