Truth and falsehood · Atlas

in the texts

Risālah fī ʻilm al-akhlāqMedieval · Arabic

Veracity and its opposite, with truth treated as a force that lasts and lying as a breach of trust.

Truthfulness is a trust and lying is a betrayal.

Atharvaveda (Paippalāda)Ancient · Sanskrit

The moral-cosmic distinction between truth and falsehood, especially as policed by Varuna and as a source of ritual danger.

Let him be wretched of skin — the lowest, the tawny one — who strikes down truthful speech with falsehood.

kanda 5 ¶

What was ground on a stone in the western direction, what raw grains and raw oblation you drank from a raw vessel — bereft of truth, whatever falsehood you spoke, may that not harm you;

kanda 5 ¶

Whether you plunged into the waters with intent, or whether you laid hold of the fire when it was blazing — whatever falsehood you spoke, knowing or unknowing, may that not harm you;

kanda 5 ¶

Kitāb mīzān al-ḥaqq fī al-manṭiq20th Century · Arabic

The opposition of truth and falsehood, whose discernment is declared the purpose of logic and the deepest human need

nor is a distinction drawn between what one believes of truth or falsehood, and what one does of good or evil, and what one says of truth or lying.

conception and judgment ¶ · printed page 22

And for this reason man cannot do without training himself in distinguishing truth from falsehood.

conception and judgment ¶ · printed page 24

What he needed, rather, was an indicator (dalīl) to guide him to the discernment of truth from falsehood without regard to the form of the expression

introduction ¶ · printed page 13