in the heavens. He always succeeds, but
since he no longer has a body to digest
them, they escape unharmed through
Rahu’s severed neck. This, of course, is
the traditional explanation for solar and
lunar eclipses; their association with the
malevolent Rahu has led eclipses to be
seen as highly inauspicious times. See
also Tortoise avatar.
Raidas
A variant name for the Hindu poet-
saint Ravidas.
Rajabhiseka
(“royal anointing”) Royal consecration
ceremony that replaced the earlier raja-
suyarite. The Rajabhiseka includes ritu-
als of anointing that were believed to
have transformative power, but were
less complex than the Rajasuya, and did
not involve the ritual slaughter and sac-
rificeof animals.
Rajadharma
General name for the “king’s dharma,”
or religious duty, which fell to him (or far
more rarely, her) by virtue of his role as
ruler. This notion proceeded from the
assumption in the dharma literature
that every person had a unique role to
play in society, a role that provided for
social stability but also brought individ-
ual fulfillment. The king’s most basic
duty was to maintain order in the realm,
since such peace enabled all others to
fulfill their own individual religious
duties (svadharma). The dharma litera-
ture conceives of maintaining order pri-
marily through inflicting punishment
(danda), designed to remove some evil-
doers and frighten the rest into good
behavior. If the king succeeded in main-
taining social order, then he could oth-
erwise do as he pleased, with the proviso
that taxation should not be so high that
it was burdensome to the people.
Beyond this, the Indian theory of king-
ship was largely pragmatic.
Rajagrha
Ancient name for the city corresponding
to modern Rajgir, in the Nalanda district
of the state of Bihar. Although contem-
porary Rajgir is a small and insignificant
city, at the time of the Buddha it was the
capital of the Magadhan empire and the
center of the region’s political and intel-
lectual life. According to Buddhist tradi-
tion, Rajgir was the site of the first
Buddhist council, held shortly after the
Buddha’s death and organized to docu-
ment his teachings. This story is almost
certainly apocryphal, since the Buddhist
scriptures went through a much longer
period of development, but its setting
illustrates Rajagrha’s centrality in the
middle of the first millennium before
the turn of the common era.Raja Raja
(r. 985–1014) Monarch under whose rule
(and that of his son Rajendra) the Chola
dynastyreached the apex of its power,
stretching its influence from the Tanjore
district of Tamil Nadu throughout
southern India and into southeast Asia
all the way to Malaysia. Raja Raja directed
the wealth that such power brought
toward the construction of massive
temples. Of these, he is most noted
for the Brhadeshvartemple in the city
of Tanjore, dedicated to the “Great
Lord” Shiva.Rajas
(“passion”) One of the three fundamen-
tal qualities (gunas) believed to be pre-
sent in all things, the other two gunas
being sattva (“goodness”) and tamas
(“darkness”). According to this model,
differing proportions of these qualities
account for differences in the properties
of concrete things, and in the range of
individual human capacities and ten-
dencies. Unlike sattva and tamas, which,
respectively, carry exclusively good and
bad associations, rajas and its effects can
be either positive or negative, depending
on context. Rajas is negative, for example,
when it leads to an enslavement to theRaidas