Snakes are a sacred and sinister presence throughout the history of Hinduism, and ideas about them and images of them that appear in many early texts resurface later in the tale of Manasa. Hindu snakes are liminal creatures, on the borderline between animals and the anthropo- morphic categories of beings (men, gods, and demons). In fact, one word that is usually translated as “snake” is far more ambiguous than a simple serpent; it is naga, which designates any of the creatures, anthropomor- phic from the waist up and cobra from the waist down, who live in the watery underworld (patala) and in deep waters on earth. The translation of naga as “snake” is somewhat justified by the fact that nagas are often assimilated to more ordinary snakes or reptiles (sarpas, cognate with the English word “serpents,” meaning “gliders” or “slitherers”), but they
2 THE TRIUMPH OF THE SNAKE GODDESS
remain creatures betwixt and between.