ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors look at how class systems changed from 900 to 1300. Stratification of people into a range of high-status and low-status roles continued to allow confederations and city-states to conquer large geographic areas, construct cathedrals, build roads, and dredge harbors. The authors explores what happened to people who existed outside the social class rankings – how did they become outsiders, and what were the terms of exclusion? Outlaws were banished because they had broken formal laws or committed social taboos. The majority of texts of the Ramayana are from the medieval period, from the sixth to the sixteenth centuries, and one of the oldest written witnesses is on palm leaves dated to the eleventh century CE. It was and still is memorized and recited by oral storytellers called bhopa. Many social supports allowed the disabled to participate in society, especially within the religious spaces of pilgrimage and the seeking of cures at shrines.
