Puranic Encyclopaedia: A Comprehensive Dictionary with Special Reference to the Epic and Puranic Literature c9.220
Purāṇic Encyclopaedia: A Comprehensive Dictionary with Special Reference to the Epic and Purāṇic Literature c9.220
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c9.220
1) General. Rāmāyaṇa is considered to be the first poetic composition in the world or at least in India, and hence it is called the Ādi Kāvya (First Epic). It is an epic as it contains descriptions and references to ancient themes. Vālmīki is its author, and hence Vālmīki is known as the ‘Ādi kavi” also. Vālmīki and Śrī Rāma were contemporaries. During his life in exile in the forest Rāma visited Vālmīki’s āśrama. It was in this āśrama that Sītā lived after being abandoned by Rāma. The connection in many ways of the life of Vālmīki with the ‘Rāma story’ was an incentive for him to write the Rāmāyaṇa.