Volume One of this great epic follows Rama's life through his growing-up years and his exile in the forest to Sita's abduction and Hanuman's leap of faith.Modern scholars claim that the Ramayana was first composed around 300 BC. The epic is called the Adi Kavya, the world's first poem. Ramesh Menon's The Ramayana is a novelist's lush, imaginative rendering, rather than a scholar's translation.