Translation of the work by Sri P B Annangarachariar Swami

How does the Valmiki Ramayanam begin? By the order of Brahma, Narada Maharishi comes to the ashrama of the sage Valmiki. Valmiki welcomes him, offers his respects and then requests him to tell him about a man living in this world today having sixteen divine qualities ("kOn asmin sAmpradam loke guNavAn kascha vIryavAn ...").

Hearing that, Narada says "Sri Rama who was born in the Ikshvaku clan is renowned in this world. He was born to Kausalya Devi and Dasaratha. His divine qualities cannot be described by anyone." And goes on to tell Valmiki His divine story in a short form.

Later Brahma appears directly to Valmiki and attaining his blessings, Valmiki wrote the Sri Ramayanam. This is told in the beginning of the work itself. The divine qualities that Valmiki asked to Narada are sixteen in number. Since the Moon has sixteen phases, Sri Rama with these sixteen qualities is known as Ramachandra. In explaining the sixteen qualities and showing how Rama exhibited these, one can cover the entire Sri Ramayanam.

There is nothing to show that Valmiki knew about Sri Rama only after hearing about Him from Narada. He was reciting the divine Sri Rama mantra even prior to this event. It is therefore that Brahma, who had written an extensive Sri Ramanyanam and taught that to Narada and other Rishis in his loka, decided to send Narada to Valmiki's ashrama and through him write a smaller version of Sri Ramayanam and spread it in this world. Therefore, these sixteen qualities were indeed gathered by Valmiki from the story of Rama and not the other way around.

Our acharyas have expressed the idea that He descended to this world to primarily exhibit these qualities and the killing of Ravana was only incidental to this effort ("guNaparIvAhAtmanAm janmanAm").

Therefore,

• within the sixteen qualities asked by Valmiki, the entire story of Sri Rama can be explained,
• as Valmiki was always reciting the Sri Rama mantra, these qualities were already present in his thoughts, and
• this is why he asked Narada about a man with those qualities.

Since the experience of Sri Ramayanam through the questions asked by Valmiki is unique, this effort is titled Apoorva Ramayanam.