Kishkindha was the Monkey Kingdom of the Vanara (monkey) King Sugriva, the younger brother of Bali, in the Indian epic the Ramayana. This was the kingdom where he ruled with the assistance of his minister, Hanuman. This kingdom is identified to be the regions around the Tungabhadra river (then known as Pampa Saras) near Hampi in Karnataka.

The Ramayana is a story as old as time and - at least in the Indian subcontinent and across much of Southeast Asia - of unparalleled popularity. More than 2300 years ago the scholar-poet Valmiki sat down to write his definitive epic of love and war.

The poem Valmiki composed is styled the Ramayana, or "Romance of Rama" in Sanskrit. In its present form, the Sanskrit version consists of some 24,000 couplets divided into seven books.