The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c14.54

v1.c14.54

In the physical world there rules a regular order, Ṛta, which is observed repeatedly, and which is clearly an inheritance from the Indo-Iranian period, since the term Aša (Urta) is found in the Avesta, and has there the same triple sense as in Vedic India, the physical order of the universe, the due order of the sacrifice, and the moral law in the world. We are doubtless justified in seeing in the word Arta as it appears in the names recorded in the Tell-el-Amarna correspondence the same word, and in inferring that the sense was somewhat the same at that early period about 1400 b. c.⁶ The identity of the Vedic and Avestan expressions is proved beyond possibility of doubt by the expression ‘spring of Ṛta’, which is verbally identical in the Avesta⁷ and the Rigveda.⁸ The Dawns arise in the morning according to the Ṛta, the Fathers have placed the sun in the heaven according to the Ṛta; the sun is the bright countenance of the Ṛta, and the darkness of the eclipse is contrary to law, Vrata. The year is the wheel of Ṛta with twelve spokes. The red raw milk, the product of the white uncooked cow, is the Ṛta of the cow under the guidance of the Ṛta. Agni, the fire, which, hidden in the waters and the plants, is produced for man from out the kindling sticks, becomes the shoot of Ṛta, born in the Ṛta. The streams flow in obedience to the law of Ṛta. From the physical it is an easy step to the conception of the Ṛta not merely in the moral world, of which we shall have cause to speak later,⁹ but also in the sphere of the sacrifice: the conception of Agni as performing his functions of carrying the offerings to the gods, or bringing the gods to the offerings, under the control and guidance of the holy power of order is at once natural and obvious. The stress laid on the conception of the Ṛta in the sphere of the sacrifice which furthers it and which it pervades¹ seems certainly to be no more than a reflex of its importance at once in the physical and the moral sphere.