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Ṛta — The Order
before this →The Source — Śruti
Before the darśanas, before dharma, there is a word in the Ṛgveda for the way the world holds: ṛta. It is the earliest layer of the grammar this whole landscape speaks.
Order and truth, inseparable
ṛtaṃ satyaṃ
The Vedic pair is ṛtaṃ satyaṃ — order and truth. That the sun rises, that a promise binds, that a rite done rightly works: these are the same fact seen from different sides. Ṛta is how things hold; satya is that they hold.
the seedLater, ṛta becomes dharma in the social register,
and niyama or vidhi in the philosophical one. But the intuition is
unchanged: reality is not chaos, and living well means living with its grain.
ṚTAcosmic order — the way things hold
SATYAtruth — that they hold
DHARMAthe same order, in conduct
introduces →ṛtasatyavaruṇadharma