It's a story as old as time and - at least in the Indian subcontinent and across much of Southeast Asia - of unparalleled popularity. More than two thousand three hundred years ago, at about the same time as Alexander the Great invaded north-west India, in another, less troubled part of that vast country the scholar-poet Valmiki sat down to write his definitive epic of love and war.

The poem Valmiki composed is styled the Ramayana, or "Romance of Rama" in Sanskrit. The shorter of India's two great epic poems - the other being the Mahabharata, or "Great Epic of the Bharata Dynasty" - the Ramayana is, nevertheless, of considerable length. In its present form, the Sanskrit version consists of some 24,000 couplets divided into seven books. It's astonishing, then, to think that people beyond count have memorised the entire work, and that at no time, probably, since Valmiki's initial composition, has the Ramayana not enjoyed passionate recitation somewhere in Asia. Today it remains as vital as ever, though television, film and radio have brought it to a wider audience than Valmiki could ever have conceived. It's the favourite story of half the world - and its appeal continues to grow.

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