MANASA ICONOGRAPHY : A STUDY THROUGH HER TEXTUAL NARRATIVES

The serpent goddess Manasa occupies a unique place in Bengal’s cultural and religious imagination. Emerging from the fears and reverence surrounding snakes, her worship took root among rural communities such as cowherds, farmers, and fishermen, before gradually entering the Brahminical fold. This paper explores Manasa’s journey as traced through a wide corpus of textual traditions—from the Mahabharata and the Manasamangal Kavyas to the Brahmavaivarta Purana and Raghunandan’s Tithitattva—and places them in dialogue with archaeological evidence from Bengal. The study highlights how these sources, though fragmented and varied, collectively shaped her iconography: the snake-hood canopy, the earthen pot, the Sij plant, the Parnavali, and the figure of Astika. Rather than offering a single, uniform representation, Manasa’s imagery evolved through negotiations of class, gender, and power, reflected in the tensions between popular devotion and elite acceptance. By revisiting her narratives and comparing them with surviving stone and metal images, this paper argues that the Manasamangal Kavyas and dhyanas provide the strongest iconographic cues for identifying the goddess in Bengal’s material culture. Ultimately, Manasa’s story underscores how local traditions shaped divine forms, transforming an indigenous serpent deity into a goddess enshrined within Bengal’s religious and artistic landscape.