Truth, Power of

In popular Hindu belief, truth is seen as
having magical power of its own, a
power to which people can appeal in
their time of distress. One way of
appealing to this power is through the
famous act of truth, a conditional statement in which the first part is a true
statement about one’s past behavior and
the second part a request for some specific result (for example, “If I have always
given to those who begged from me,
may this fire not burn me”). The power
of truth was also invoked in trial by
ordeal and was seen as the power
that made the ordeal a valid means of
testing people.