Vālmīki
c. 700 BCE · Bithoor
Traditionally revered as the seer-poet (ādi-kavi) of the Rāmāyaṇa. Tradition places him in the remote Tretā Yuga, but the conventional placement here (~700 BCE) follows scholarly estimates for the earliest core of the epic (roughly 7th-5th c. BCE), which grew by later accretion. Whether a single historical poet underlies the figure is uncertain; the date is a conventional anchor, not biography.
Valmiki is honored in tradition as the ādi-kavi, the first poet, and the seer to whom the Rāmāyaṇa is ascribed. Legend tells of his transformation from a highwayman into a sage who composed the epic and sheltered Sītā at his hermitage, where her sons Lava and Kuśa were raised. While the epic's oldest layers (kāṇḍas 2–6) are usually placed by scholars in the mid-first millennium BCE, with later additions (including the Bāla and Uttara kāṇḍas) extending into the early centuries CE, the figure of Valmiki himself is preserved through tradition rather than historical record.
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Bithoor
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