Valmiki is honoured in Indian tradition as the adi-kavi, the first poet, and as the sage who composed the Ramayana in Sanskrit. The poem itself presents him as a hermit on the banks of the Tamasa who learns Rama's story from the sage Narada, invents the sloka metre in a moment of grief, and later shelters Sita and teaches her sons to sing the epic. Nothing is known of him outside the tradition, and scholars generally date the poem's composition across several centuries rather than to a single lifetime.
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“With equal lines of even feet, With rhythm and time and tone complete, The measured form of words I spoke In shock of grief be termed a śloke.”
c. 5th century BC-3rd century AD (traditional) · Ancient · Epic
The Ramayana, the story of Rama's journey, is one of the two great Sanskrit epics of India, attributed to the sage Valmiki and composed in the sloka couplet. It opens with a frame: Valmiki asks the sage Narada whether any man on earth is perfectly virtuous, hears the life of Rama, and, moved to pity when a fowler shoots one of a pair of curlews, utters the first sloka; the god Brahma then bids him tell the whole tale.