The "Ramayana", originally written by Valmiki, consists of 24,000 shlokas and seven cantos (kaṇḍas). The is composed of about 480,002 words, being a quarter of the length of the full text of the "Mahabharata" or about four times the length of the "Iliad". The "Ramayana" tells the story of a prince, Rama of the city of Ayodhya in the Kingdom of Kosala, whose wife Sita is abducted by Ravana, the demon-king (Asura) of Lanka. Valmiki's "Ramayana" is dated variously from 500 BCE to 100 BCE or about co-eval with early versions of the "Mahabharata". As with many traditional epics, it has gone through a process of interpolations and redactions, making it impossible to date accurately.