History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v4.c63.9

v4.c63.9

The idea of Dharma took the place of the very ancient conception of *ṛta*. In the Ṛgveda ṛta denotes the supreme transcendental law or the cosmic order by which the universe and even the gods are governed and which is intimately connected with sacrifice. Vide Ṛg. I. 68. 2, I. 105. 12, I. 136. 2, I. 142. 7, I. 164. 11, II. 28. 4, IV. 23. 8–10 (in which the word ṛta occurs ten times), X. 190. 1. On the relation of ṛta and law Berolzheimer in his ‘The world’s legal philosophies’ (translated by Jastrow, New York, 1929) says: “closely connected with the religious and philosophical views of the Aryans are certain fundamental positions in regard to the philosophy of law which in turn became the antecedents of later legal and ethical developments among the Greeks and Romans. Foremost among these philosophical conceptions is ‘rita’, which is at once the organized principle of the universe and the divine ordering of earthly life; as the former it regulates the appearance of the sun and the moon, of day and night and embodies the unchangeable principle that pervades the succession of phenomena; as the latter it is affiliated with purpose and human benefit and is exemplified in the flow of the rivers which fertilize the fields; in the cattle useful to men; in the institutions of marriage, of the monarchical state, of the patriarchal home; and in man’s sense of responsibility for his sins. The derivative conceptions of ‘vrata’, ‘dharma’, ‘dhāma’, ‘svadhā’ represent special aspects of ‘rita’; thus ‘vrata’ refers to any specialized embodied ‘rita’; while ‘dharma’ refers specifically to the moral function of rewarding good and punishing evil” (pp. 37–38). Vide Prof. V. M. Apte’s paper or ‘Ṛta’ in the Ṛgveda (pp. 55–60 of the Silver Jubilee Volume of the Annals of the B. O. R. Institute) in which he tries to prove that ṛta means primarily ‘the belt of the Zodiac’.