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Some Jain Versions of the 'Act of Truth' Theme
Paul Dundas
Scholars of Hindu and Buddhist narrative have long been familiar with the authoritative verbal action which takes the name "act of truth" or "truth act" from the Pāli expression saccakiriya. Having its origins in the Veda and deriving its force from the perception that truth (satya) is closely connected both ontologically and etymologically with existent reality (sat), an act of truth effects its result for the person activating it through the magic power of words which enunciate something indubitably true, at least for the utterer. According to George Thompson, who has recently put the subject on a more sophisticated footing in terms both of general theoretical background and exegesis of specific Vedic examples, an act of truth is "an act of personal authority, an assertion that rests on the power of the performer to accomplish sometimes very remarkable things....by the mere utterance of certain words, and in a recognisably regular and formal way". Thompson goes on to mention that all earlier scholarly accounts of the Vedic act of truth have pointed to the occurrence within it of a phrase corresponding to "by (that) truth...", i.e. satyena, or in early Vedic versions ṛtena, sometimes prefaced by tena2. Use of the word "truth" seems then to have been an integral part of this verbal action at the outset.
Jain Education International
However, just as attitudes towards the authority and status of the Veda did not remain fixed in ancient Indian society, so the literary context of the truth act also changed, even to the extent, so Brown suggested, of its migrating to the Near East and being employed in mutated form in a famous episode in the life of Jesus occurring in the Gospel of St. Matthew3. If the Vedic vision of the near cosmic power of truth gradually weakened, alternative visions of what constituted truth emerged in the non-brahman
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