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Truth
common duties. Relative duties are those which are relevant to a particular group of persons, and their stations of life. They are specific to a person's 'varṇa' or 'āśrama'. The universal or common duties on the other hand are duties irrespective of one's age, caste or creed, i.e. they are simply obligatory on a man as a man. The principle of truth is not a specific or relative duty, but it is a common or general duty of man. He has enumerated these common duties as ten.1 Prasastapāda also classifies duties into generic and specific. He too includes truth or 'satyavacana' into his twelve-fold list of virtues pertaining to mankind in general.
Manu, to emphasize the importance of truth, has said that speech furnishes the most important means of communicating one's thoughts and ideas to others, and there is no other better way to express oneself than to speak out. And one who pollutes his speech by saying an untruth is like one who steals from his own wealth.2 Hence, he has declared clearly that only that will be and should be spoken which has been purified by truth. 9 In the Mahābhārata Bhişma concluded his exhortation to Yudhisthira by saying that truth is the gist of all duties and dharma of life one has towards others or to his own self; all moral life must be based on truth alone.4 And the principle of truth, it is said, is self-explanatory and needs no justification.
2.
So far 'truth' is understood as the highest moral principle, yet it is unthinkable without making allowance for certain.
1.
धृतिः क्षमा दमोऽस्तेयं शौचमिन्द्रियनिग्रहः
धी : विद्या सत्यमक्रोधो दशकं धर्मलक्षणम् । arryf f¬yar: g as yr arftafa:yar: तांस्तु यः स्तेनयेद्वाचं
स सर्वस्तेयकृन्नरः ।
3.
सत्यपूतां वदेद्वाचं ।
-Manu. 6.46.
4. सत्येषु यतिताव्यं वः सत्यं हि परमं बलं ।
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Manu. 6. 91.
-Manu. 4.256.
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-Mahābhā., Anusāsanaparva, 167.49.
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