Literary and cultural links between India and Southeast Asia are submerged in the folds of time. There is a long history of literary and cultural transmissions between India and Southeast Asia through maritime and trade routes that brought almost the entire region under direct or indirect Indian influence. Literary and cultural influence of India is visible in Java, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The most important literary influences of India on Southeast Asia are Rāmāyana and Mahābhārata. Rama of the Indian epic Rāmāyana, is the source of many literary works and cultural formations in this region, in the same way there are Malay versions of the Mahābhārata, some of which probably entered Malay as abbreviated prose renditions of the Old Javanese Bhratayuddha. The earliest, Hikayat Perang Pandawa Jaya, ‘The tale of the war of the victorious Pandawa’, was composed sometime between the late 14th and early 16th century, and is mentioned in the Bustan al-salatin of Nuruddin al-Raniri composed in Aceh in 1638.