Tulsidas, who wrote the Ramcharitmanas, is thought to be the incarnation of sage Valmiki. The Ramayana by the sage Valmiki is one of the great epics of the Sanskrit language, and is dated to approximately 200 B.C.E. The Ramayana Valmiki The Ramayana is an epic and it tells us about the life in India a long time ago (1000 BCE). They were his first disciples and he taught them the story of Lord Ram. The names of the characters (Rama, Sita, Dasharatha, Janaka, Vasishta, Vishwaamitra) are all known in late Vedic literature, older than the Valmiki Ramayana. Sage Valmiki is also a featured character in Ramayana who received Sita into his hermitage and taught her sons, Luv and Kush during their exile period. Summary of Valmiki Ramayana- 7 Kandas Traditionally, the Ramayana is attributed to Valmiki, regarded as Indias first poet.
Ramayana is composed of about 480,002 words, being a quarter of the length of the full text of another Hindu epic Mahabharata or about four times the length of the Iliad, the ancient Greek epic poem. His epic is also called the Valmiki Ramayana which has 24,000 verses and 7 cantos ( kandas) including the Uttara canto. Maharishi Valmiki composed the entire Ramayana with the guidance of Vedic sage Narad Muni and blessings of Lord Brahma. Valmiki Jayanti celebrates the birthday of the famous poet and falls on October 13, Sunday, this year. He also invented shloka or verses, which defined the form to Sanskrit poetry. They also came upon a holy hermit, who gave Rama a splendid bow and arrow created by the gods. Maharishi Valmiki is the adi kavi or the first poet in Sanskrit literature who authored the holy epic Ramayana, also the first kavya or poetry. On their journey the three exiles came across the poet Valmiki, who promised to write a glorious epic about them called the Ramayana.