Citation Needed - 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices
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Query: 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices
Citation Needed
Quoted text:
The Linguistic Root ‘Reg’ (‘Regularity,’ ‘Regime,’ ‘Royal,’ Etc.)
Modern languages associate rulership with the ideas of regime, regulation, and regularity, above all in the sense of administering distributive justice. To be sure, royal titles such as “czar” and “kaiser” derive from the family name of Julius Caesar. The word “king” means “head,” alluding to a sequential order—the head of a procession, or perhaps of a table.
Nearly all communities associate the act of ruling—in the sense of proclaiming laws and judging—with that of measuring. This double-sense is inherent in Indo-European words for rulership. Measures are rules, and rules are laws. Rulers rule by taking measures. These notions underlie a broad complex of words associated with the root “reg.” The list includes Hindu “rajah,” English “regent,” and French “roi,” as well as the German word for government, “Regierung,” and hence the land ruled: “Das Reich,” the realm. The English cognate is “region,” and the name “Richard” derives from the same root.
The evolution of this “reg” terminology reflects an abstraction from quantitative rules to more general laws. A figurative usage is thus at work. The idea of ruling—in the sense of saying who should get how much, and how often—was an important step toward establishing regularity in archaic palaces and temples, and in time for society at large. Setting ration levels and prices for the major commodities and public services is what empowered Near Eastern rulers literally to rule. Administering such regularity is what the word “rule” literally meant, along with its related words “regal,” “royal,” and “regime.”Citations needed for this section.
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