318 EARLIER INDIAN SPEECHES
who think with me, in founding this institution. And I shall venture this morning to place before you the rules that have been drawn up and that have to be observed by every one who seeks to be a member of that Ashram.
Five of these are known as Yamas and the first and the foremost is,
THE VOW OF TRUTH.
Not truth simply as we -ordinarily understand it, that as far as possible, we ought not to resort to a lie, that is to say, not truth which merely answers the say- ing, " Honesty is the best policy" implying that if it is not the best policy, we may depart from it. Bot here truth as it is conceived, means that we have to rule our life by this law of Truth at any cost. And in order to satisfy the definition I have drawn upon the celebrated illustration of the life of Prahlad. For the sake of truth, he dared to oppose his own father, and he defend- ed himself, not by retaliation, by paying his father back in his own coin, but in defence of Truth,'as he knew it; he was prepared to die without caring to return the blows that he had received from his father or from those who were charged with his father's instruc- tions. Not only that : he would not in any way even parry the blows : on the contrary, with a smile on his lips, he underwent the innumerable tortures to which he was subjected, with the result that, at last. Truth rose triumphant; not that Prahlad suffered the tortures because he knew that some day or other in his very life-time he would be able to demonstrate the infallibility of the Law of Truth, That fact was there ; but if he had died in the midst of tortures, he would still have adhered to Truth. That is the Truth
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