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The apex of Proto-Indo-European society, according to the standard handbooks of Indo-European culture, was ruled by a king whose title has usually been secured by the textbook series: Sanskrit raj, Latin rex, Gaulis rix, Old Irish ri, and possibly Thracian Rhesos. It has been assumed that this Proto-Indo-European *rēǵ- was not necessarily the secular ruler whom one might normally envisage. Linguists have argued that the root of the noun is *rēǵ which provides such meanings as stretch, draw out in a straight line, and straighten. Our English word right is a reflex of this root, and the same opposition which we employ between what is straight or right and what is bent or crooked, that is, dishonest or wrong, is encountered throughout the Indo-European languages (see Chapter Five). Jan Gonda and Emile Benveniste sought in the basic etymology of the word a hint of the original function of the Proto-Indo-European *rēǵ-. Gonda suggested that the word meant one who stretches or reaches out, a metaphor for the formal activities of a king who is often depicted in Indo-European tradition as fulfilling his duties with outstretched arms. Benveniste argued that the fundamental meaning was 'one who determined what was right'. This suggested a leader who was more concerned with maintaining social and moral order than a secular sovereign exerting coercive power over his subjects or leading them in battle. Indeed, Benveniste proposed that there may have been more overtly priestly functions associated with the Proto-Indo-European king in that the root meaning of 'stretching out' or 'straightening' might be associated with duties such as laying out limits, be they demarcations of sacred territory within a settlement, the settlement itself or the borders of national territories.
This whole concept of Proto-Indo-European kings has recently been challenged. First, Andrew Sihler has argued that the underlying root is not 'to arrange in a straight line' but 'be efficacious, have mana'. Then Hartmut Scharfe reviewed the Vedic evidence, our only body of material providing an Asiatic cognate, to discover that the word raj in the earliest Vedic texts was not the masculine noun meaning king but a feminine noun indicating 'strength, power'. If this is accepted, then we no longer have evidence for Proto-Indo-European kings, and our testimony is limited to Celtic and Italic, two languages which share numerous similarities and which suggest a particular political development among some late Indo-European groups of Western Europe. Scharfe does observe that the correspondence between Sanskrit rajan- and Greek aregon suggests a Proto-Indo-European word for 'protector' or 'person with power or charisma', but not 'king'. The highest socio-political level that Scharfe attributes to the Proto-Indo-Europeans is our *weik-potis 'the master of the clan' which we have already reviewed above.
