Re: raj / rex

On 2008-11-14 14:00, kishore patnaik wrote:

> YOu are certainly not straight forward in your reply. It is you who
> talked about institution of kingship. I could not understand your
> sentence (your english) and hence the query.

I used a little-known variety called Plain Standard English ;)

> Finally, did you mean that the ancient Aryans knew about kingship or not?

I said nothing about the ancient Aryans (Indo-Aryans? Indo-Iranians?).
The question was about PIE-speakers. But since you ask, the available
evidence shows that they indeed had a system of political organisation
that could, in a loose way, be called "kingship", with a single person
(the ra:jan) being regarded as the leader, set apart from his subjects
and exercising supreme political and military power as well as important
religious and symbolic functions.

Piotr