KAI. TAM. Kar, TEL. The hand. Idan-kai, the left-hand caste ; Valan-kai, the right-hand. Kai-kara, workers in basket work. Extensively combined to indicate handiwork and pecuniary and revenue transactions, as Kai-karan, an arti ficer ; Kai-kilan, a weaver by caste and occu pation. Kaikari or Kaikadi, any handicraftsman, in Berar are makers of baskets from stems of cotton plants and palm leaves. They are a migratory and predatory race, whose ostensible occupation is basket-making. They wander through Berar. —Berar Gazetteer.
KAI, an ancient Pehlavi title applied to a great king. It was part of the title of Cyrus, the Kai Khusru of Persia, and it has given the Kyaniau dynasty its designation.
Kai one of the kings of Persia who were known to the Persians by the name of Ardeshir, and to the Romans as Artaxerxes, which was their mode of pronouncing Ardeshir. He was the Ardeshir-daraz-dast, or Ardeshir of the long arm, the Artaxerxes Longimanus of the Romans of the Kyanian dynasty.
Ardeshir Babegan bin Sassan was an officer of the Parthian king Arsaces Artabanus v., who assumed the Persian throne in A.D. 226 as the first of the Sassanian dynasty.
Ardeshir H., the tenth king of the Sassanian dynasty, was the Shapur or Sapor who captured the emperor Valerian. He assumed power in A.D. 381.
Artaxerxes Mnenion was a Persian king, B.C. 426, at whose court Ctesias resided for some years. After Scylax, Ctesias was the next historian of India, and in his Indica (cap. iv. p. 190) he mentions that Artaxerxes Mnemon and his mother Parasatya presented him with two iron swords, which, when planted in the earth, averted clouds, hail, and strokes of lightning. This is the first notice of the lightning conductor.
Ardeshir III., in A.D. 629, was the 25th Sas sanian. Under him anarchy prevailed, and the Sassanian dynasty ended in A.D. 641, when Yezdejird or Izdejerd III. was overthrown by the Muhammadan.