The great Sanskrit epic of the exiled prince Rama, his abducted wife Sita, and the war against the demon-king Ravana to win her back — credited to the sage Valmiki, but existing in hundreds of tellings across the languages and faiths of South and Southeast Asia over more than two thousand years. Rama is worshipped as an avatar of Vishnu, so for hundreds of millions the poem is living scripture rather than literature, and its very multiplicity, with no single authoritative text, is part of what it is.
There is no single Ramayana. The poem about the exiled prince Rama, his abducted wife Sita, and the war to win her back exists not in one version but in hundreds, told across many languages and faiths for over two thousand years. In some, the demon-king Ravana is pure evil; in others he is a tragic scholar-king. Some retell the whole story from Sita's side, asking why she must prove her purity by fire. The Sanskrit poem credited to the sage Valmiki is only the most famous voice in a vast chorus. To hundreds of millions, Rama is not a character but a god, and his story is scripture they live by, not literature they admire from a distance.