From soka (pity) came sloka (verse), wrote Valmiki, the Indian sage to whom the Ramayana is attributed. Moved by the death of a lovebird at a hunter’s arrow, he composed the Sanskrit epic that recounts how Rama, avatar of the god Vishnu, rescued his bride Sita from the clutches of the demon-king Ravana. From Valmiki’s verse, completed in the second half of the first millennium BC, came much else besides: a core tradition of Hinduism, prayers, festivals, countless retellings in drama, sculpture and painting across India and south-east Asia and, now, a rich and lively exhibition at the British Library.

At the show’s heart is the Ramayana manuscript commissioned in the early 17th century by Jagat Singh, ruler of the state of Mewar in north-west India. This included more than 400 paintings, the aim being to depict every single one of the 24,000-verse narrative’s twists and turns. In the book accompanying the exhibition, Jerry Losty, its curator, suggests that this extravagant completism was one-upmanship directed at Mewar’s Mogul overlords. They had their own lavishly illustrated versions both of the Ramayana and of the lives of their glorious forebears; but the princes of Mewar claimed descent from Rama and, in creating the new Ramayana, Jagat Singh wanted implicitly to rebuke their pretensions.