He had a beautiful wife and both of them were faithful to each other.

The Nagara Khanda of the Skanda Purana in its section on the creation of Mukhara Tirtha mentions that Valmiki was born a Brahmin, with the name of Lohajangha and was a devoted son to his parents. There also exist some legends about Valmiki having been a thief before turning into a rishi. Agni Sharma, rechristened as Valmiki, learnt the scriptures from Narada and became the foremost of ascetics, revered by everyone. Huge anthills formed around Agni Sharma and this earned him the name of Valmiki. As he performed his penance for several years, the word became 'Rama', the name of Lord Vishnu. Moved by Narada's words, Agni Sharma began to perform penance and chanted the word 'Mara' which meant 'die'. Valmiki was born as Agni Sharma to a Brahmin named Pracheta (also known as Sumali) of Bhrigu gotra, According to legend he once met the great sage Narada and had a discourse with him on his duties. Menen claims Valmiki is 'the first author in all history to bring himself into his own composition.' Valmiki is also quoted as being the contemporary of Rama. As with many traditional epics, it has gone through a process of interpolations and redactions, making it impossible to date accurately.īritish satirist Aubrey Menen says that Valmiki was 'recognized as a literary genius,' and thus was considered, 'an outlaw,' presumably because of his ' philosophic scepticism,' as part of an 'Indian Enlightenment' period. Valmiki's Ramayana is dated variously from 500 BCE to 100 BCE or about co-eval with early versions of the Mahabharata.

The Ramayana tells the story of a prince, Rama of the city of Ayodhya in the Kingdom of Kosala, whose wife Sita is abducted by Ravana, the demon-king ( Asura) of Lanka. The Ramayana is composed of about 480,002 words, being a quarter of the length of the full text of the Mahabharata or about four times the length of the Iliad. The Ramayana, originally written by Valmiki, consists of 24,000 shlokas and seven cantos (kaṇḍas). He is revered as Ādi Kavi, the first poet, author of Ramayana, the first epic poem. The epic Ramayana, dated variously from the 5th century BCE to first century BCE, is attributed to him, based on the attribution in the text itself. Valmiki ( / v ɑː l ˈ m iː k i/ Sanskrit: वाल्मीकि, Vālmīki ) is celebrated as the harbinger- poet in Sanskrit literature.

Free download ramayan in gujarati pdf