The Ramayana, also known as the Valmiki Ramayana, as traditionally attributed to Valmiki, is a Hindu smriti epic poem from ancient India. It is one of the two important epics of Hinduism known as the Itihasas, the other being the Mahabharata, narratives of past events, interspersed with teachings on the goals of human life. The epic narrates the life and journey of Rama, the seventh avatar of the Hindu deity Vishnu, who was the prince of Ayodhya. It is one of the largest ancient epics in world literature and consists of nearly 24,000 shlokas (verses), divided into seven kāṇḍa (chapters), where each shloka is a couplet.