In his ashram, given to tapasya and to the study of the Vedas, Maharishi Valmiki once asked Narada ji a question. "Who in this world, now, is truly virtuous and truly brave? Who knows dharma, remembers every kindness done to him, speaks only the truth and holds firm to what he has resolved? Who is good to every living being, learned, able, and a joy to look upon; who has mastered his anger, and before whom, when roused to battle, even the gods are afraid? I long to know."
Narada ji answered: "The qualities you name are many and hard to find in one person. But I have heard from Brahma ji of such a man, and I will tell you of him." And he told Valmiki the story of Shri Ram of the Ikshvaku line, from beginning to end, in brief. Valmiki honoured Narada ji with his disciples, and Narada ji took his leave and went back to the world of the gods.
Then Valmiki went with his disciple Bharadwaj to the bank of the Tamasa, not far from the Ganga, to bathe. Looking at a clear ford, he said, "See, Bharadwaj, how clean this water is: clear, like the mind of a good man." He took his bark garment from his disciple and walked along the bank, looking at the forest all around. There he saw a pair of krauncha birds, never apart from each other, calling sweetly as they moved together.
As the sage watched, a hunter, a nishada, shot the male bird. It fell to the ground covered in blood, and the female, seeing her companion struck down, cried out in grief. Compassion rose in Valmiki's heart. Seeing the weeping bird, he spoke, and the words came in a measure no one had heard before: "O hunter, may you find no rest for endless years, for you have killed one of this pair of krauncha birds, lost in love."
Then he stopped, wondering: what was this that he had said, in his sorrow for a bird? He said to Bharadwaj, "Born of my grief, it has four quarters of equal syllables and can be sung to the strings of the veena. Let it be called a shloka, and nothing else." Bharadwaj learned it by heart, and was glad. The sage bathed, and walked back to the ashram still turning the verse over in his mind.
There Brahma ji himself came to the ashram. Valmiki rose in wonder, washed his feet, offered him a seat and honoured him; yet even sitting before Brahma ji, his mind kept going back to the bird and to the verse. Brahma ji smiled and said: "It was by my wish alone that this speech came to you. Now tell the whole story of Shri Ram, as Narada told it to you: of Ram and Lakshman, of Sita, of what is known and what is hidden. Nothing in your poem will be untrue. As long as the mountains stand and the rivers flow upon the earth, so long will the Ramayan be told in the world." Saying this, Brahma ji vanished, and the disciples sang the verse again and again with joy.
So Valmiki made the Ramayan, the first poem, and he is called the Adi Kavi, the first poet. It was in his ashram that Sita Maa found shelter, and there her twin sons, Luv and Kush, were born and grew up under his care. He taught them the whole Ramayan, and the two boys sang it, sweetly and without a fault, in the gatherings of the rishis, who cried out "Splendid, splendid!", and at last before Shri Ram himself in Ayodhya.
When Sita Maa was brought before the assembly, Valmiki stood beside her and spoke to Shri Ram: "I am the tenth son of Pracheta, Raghunandan, and I do not remember ever having spoken an untruth. These two are your sons. I have done no wrong, before this day, in thought, in deed or in word." That is how the Ramayan itself speaks of the man who wrote it: a rishi of truth, the son of Pracheta, whose grief for a wounded bird became the first shloka.
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