Indian Subcontinent
The Sanskrit word for emperor is Samrāṭ or Chakravarti (word stem: samrāj). This word has been used as an epithet of various Vedic deities, like Varuna, and has been attested in the Holy Rig Veda, possibly the oldest compiled book among the Indo-Europeans. Chakravarti refers to the king of kings. A Chakravarti is not only a sovereign ruler but also has feudatories.
Typically, in the later Vedic age, a Hindu king (Maharajah) was only called Samrāṭ after performing the Vedic Rājasūya sacrifice, enabling him by religious tradition to claim superiority over the other kings and princes. Another word for emperor is sārvabhaumā. The title of Samrāṭ has been used by many rulers of the Indian subcontinent as claimed by the Hindu mythologies. In proper history, most historians call Chandragupta Maurya the first samrāṭ (emperor) of the Indian subcontinent, because of the huge empire he ruled. The most famous Buddhist emperor was his grandson Ashoka the Great. Other dynasties that are considered imperial by historians are the Kushanas, Guptas, Vijayanagara, Hoysala and the Cholas.
After India was invaded by the Mongol Khans and Turkic Muslims, the rulers of their major states on the subcontinent were titled Sultān, In this manner, the only empress-regnant ever to have actually sat on the throne of Delhi was Razia Sultan. For the period from 1877 to 1947 when British Emperors ruled colonial India as the pearl in the crown of the British Empire, see above.
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