1785.—"... their chief (more worthless in truth than a [horsekeeper])." In note—"In the original the word [syse] is introduced for the sake of a jingle with the word Ryse (a chief or leader)."—Tippoo's Letters, 18.
1870.—"Raees." See under [RYOT].
1900.—"The petition was signed by representative landlords, raises."—Pioneer Mail, April 13.]
RAJA, RAJAH, s. Skt. rājā, 'king.' The word is still used in this sense, but titles have a tendency to degenerate, and this one is applied to many humbler dignitaries, petty chiefs, or large Zemindars. It is also now a title of nobility conferred by the British Government, as it was by their Mahommedan predecessors, on Hindus, as Nawāb is upon Moslem. Rāī, Rāo, Rānā, Rāwal, Rāya (in S. India), are other forms which the word has taken in vernacular dialects or particular applications. The word spread with Hindu civilisation to the eastward, and survives in the titles of Indo-Chinese sovereigns, and in those of Malay and Javanese chiefs and princes.
It is curious that the term Rājā cannot be traced, so far as we know, in any of the Greek or Latin references to India, unless the very questionable instance of Pliny's Rachias be an exception. In early Mahommedan writers the now less usual, but still Indian, forms Rāō and Rāī, are those which we find. (Ibn Batuta, it will be seen, regards the words for king in India and in Spain as identical, in which he is fundamentally right.) Among the English vulgarisms of the 18th century again we sometimes find the word barbarised into Roger.
c. 1338.—"... Bahā-uddīn fled to one of the heathen Kings called the Rāī Kanbīlah. The word Rāī among those people, just as among the people of Rūm, signifies 'King.'"—Ibn Batuta, iii. 318. The traveller here refers, as appears by another passage, to the Spanish Rey.
[1609.—"Raiaw." See under [GOONT].]
1612.—"In all this part of the East there are 4 castes.... The first caste is that of the Rayas, and this is a most noble race from which spring all the Kings of Canara...."—Couto, V. vi. 4.
[1615.—"According to your direction I have sent per Orincay (see [ORANKAY]) Beege Roger's junk six pecculles (see [PECUL]) of lead."—Foster, Letters, iv. 107.
[1623.—"A Ragia, that is an Indian Prince."—P. della Valle, Hak. Soc. i. 84.]