High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Raja (also spelled Rajah, from Sanskrit r j n-, nominative r j ) is the Hindustani term for a monarch, or princely ruler of the Kshatriya varna. The female form, the word for "queen", mainly used for a Raja's wife, is Rani (sometimes spelled Ranee), from Sanskrit r jñ . Raja and Rani as depicted in yakshagana A theater art from Karnataka. The title has a long history in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, being attested from the Rigveda, where a r j n- is a tribal chief, see for example the (d ar jñá), the "battle of ten kings". Sanskrit r j n- is cognate to Latin r x (genitive r gis), Gaulish r x etc., originally denoting tribal chiefs or heads of small 'city states'. It is ultimately derived from a PIE h3r s, a vrddhi formation to the root h3re - "to straighten, to order, to rule".