The Chestnut Rajah is a butterfly found in India that belongs to the Rajahs and Nawabs group, that is, the Charaxinae

Charaxinae

Charaxinae, the leafwings, is a nymphalid subfamily of butterflies that includes about 400 species, inhabiting mainly the tropics, although some species extend into temperate regions in North America, Europe, China and southern Australia. There are significant variations between the species...

 group of the Brush-footed butterflies

Nymphalidae

The Nymphalidae is a family of about 5,000 species of butterflies which are distributed throughout most of the world. These are usually medium sized to large butterflies. Most species have a reduced pair of forelegs and many hold their colourful wings flat when resting. They are also called...

 family.

Description

Male upperside brown, the basal third of fore and nearly the basal half of the hind wing chestnut-brown, the remainder of the fore wing dark brown, of the hind wing white suffused inwardly with pale greenish yellow. Fore wing with a very incomplete discal and a more complete postdiscal transverse series of more or less crescentic white markings, followed by a few terminal white specks. Hind wing: the inner margin of the white area irregularly and deeply crenulate, the brown on the basal half projecting along the veins into the white area; a sub-terminal row o£ white-centred brown ocelli without outer rings, increasing in size anteriorly, and a terminal series, often absent, of slender sagittate brown markings on the veins, the points outwards, followed by an anticiliary exceedingly slender brown line. Cilia, fore and hind wing, white alternated with brown. Underside. purplish brown; a broad discal irregular black-edged darker purple-brown sinuous band across both wings, paler on the hind wing than on the fore, followed by a more or less continuous line of dark lunules, and beyond it a postdiscal series of slightly yellowish-brown lunular markings, bordered outwardly on fore wing by pale purple, on hind wing by the series of ocelli of the upper-side showing faintly through. Antennae blackish brown finely annulated with white; head, thorax and abdomen chestnut-brown ; purplish brown beneath.

See also

• Charaxinae
  Charaxinae
  Charaxinae, the leafwings, is a nymphalid subfamily of butterflies that includes about 400 species, inhabiting mainly the tropics, although some species extend into temperate regions in North America, Europe, China and southern Australia. There are significant variations between the species...
  
  
• Nymphalidae
  Nymphalidae
  The Nymphalidae is a family of about 5,000 species of butterflies which are distributed throughout most of the world. These are usually medium sized to large butterflies. Most species have a reduced pair of forelegs and many hold their colourful wings flat when resting. They are also called...
  
  
• List of butterflies of India
• List of butterflies of India (Nymphalidae)