The first poem
The Bala Kanda tells how the Ramayana began. Valmiki asked Narada who the most virtuous man alive was, and Narada told him Rama's story. Later, by the Tamasa river, Valmiki saw a hunter kill one of a pair of krauncha birds, and his grief came out as a verse in a new metre. Brahma appeared and told him to tell Rama's whole story in that metre, the shloka. That is why the Ramayana is called the adi kavya and Valmiki the adi kavi, the first poet.
How the epic is arranged
The epic is divided into seven Kandas, or books, and each Kanda into sargas, or cantos. The shloka count used on Vedic Kathas follows the widely used southern recension, giving 648 sargas and about 23,000 shlokas. Other editions, such as the Baroda critical edition, number some sargas and verses differently.
How to read on Vedic Kathas
Each sarga has its own page. A short summary in English and Hindi comes first, followed by every shloka in four parts: the Sanskrit in Devanagari, the same verse in English letters, its meaning in Hindi and its meaning in English. Each shloka has its own link, so you can share a single verse. Character and place names in the summaries link to their pages.
