History

Traditionally, Ramayana is ascribed to a Valmiki, regarded as India's first poet. The Indian tradition, is unanimous in its agreement that the poem is the work of a single poet, the brahman sage Valmiki, a contemporary of Rama and a peripheral actor in the epic drama. The story's original version in Sanskrit is known as Valmiki Ramayana, written around 4th century B.C. According to Hindu tradition, the Ramayana takes place during a period of time, known as Treta Yuga. In the form we have it today, Valmiki Ramayana is an epic poem of some 50,000 lines retelling in Sanskrit verses. The text survives in several thousand partial and complete manuscripts, the oldest of which appears to date from the eleventh century A.D. The text has several regional renderings, recensions and subrecensions. Textual scholar Robert P. Goldman differentiates two major regional recensions—the northern (N) and the southern (S). Famous recensions include, the Ramayanam of Kamban in Tamil (ca. 11th-12th century) and Ramacharitamanas by Tulasidas in Hindi (c. 16th century). Scholar Romesh Chunder Dutt writes that, "the Ramayana, like the Mahabharata, is a growth of centuries, but the main story is more distinctly the creation of one mind." There have been speculations on whether the first and the last chapters of Valmiki's Ramayana were written by the original author. Many experts are of the opinion that they are integral parts of the book in spite of the many differences in style and some contradictions in content between these two chapters and the rest of the book.