Manasa is the goddess of snakes worshipped across the eastern regions of the Indian subcontinent, Bengal, Assam, Bihar and Odisha, who protects against snakebite and cures it, a matter of real consequence in the wet, snake-filled countryside where her worship is strongest. She is shown seated on a lotus or a snake, sometimes one-eyed, canopied by the hoods of serpents. Her importance is carried above all by her narrative poems, the Manasamangal, a major genre of medieval Bengali literature that tells how the goddess wins worship from an unwilling world.
The central story turns on the wealthy merchant Chand Sadagar, a devout worshipper of Shiva who refuses to honour Manasa, and on the goddess's relentless campaign to break his resistance: she destroys his ships and his sons, until the death of his last son Lakhindar on his wedding night. The dead groom's devoted bride Behula sets out on a raft bearing his body, journeys to the assembly of the gods, and by her devotion wins her husband's life, on condition that Chand at last offer Manasa his worship, which he does, grudgingly, with his left hand. The tale expresses a recurring theme in the rise of regional goddesses: the deity, outside the older Brahminical order, compels recognition through the ordeal she visits on those who withhold it. Manasa remains widely venerated, especially in the rainy season when snakes are most active.