Oath
Traditionally, an oath (from Anglo-Saxon āþ, also a plight) is a statement of fact or a promise taken by a sacrality as a sign of verity.
Nowadays, even when there is no notion of sanctity involved, certain promises said out loud in ceremonial or juridical purpose are referred to as oaths.
The word comes from Anglo-Saxon āþ: "judicial swearing, solemn appeal to deity in witness of truth or a promise"; from Proto-Germanic *aiþaz; from Proto-Indo-European *oi-to-: "an oath".
Common to Celtic and Germanic, possibly a loan-word from one to the other, but the history is obscure and it may be non-Indo-European, in reference to careless invocations of divinity, from the late 12th century.
It is found in Genesis 8:21, when God swears that he will "never again curse the ground because of man and never again smite every living thing".
This repetition of the term never again is explained by Rashi, the pre-eminent biblical commentator, as serving as an oath, citing the Talmud Shavous 36a for this ruling.
Iuppiter Lapis was held in the Roman tradition to be an Oath Stone, an aspect of Jupiter in his role as divine law-maker responsible for order and used principally for the investiture of the oathtaking of office.
According to Cyril Bailey, in "The Religion of Ancient Rome" (1907): We have, for instance, the sacred stone (silex) which was preserved in the temple of Iuppiter on the Capitol, and was brought out to play a prominent part in the ceremony of treaty-making.
Here no doubt the underlying notion is not merely symbolical, but in origin the stone is itself the god, an idea which later religion expressed in the cult-title specially used in this connection, Iuppiter Lapis.
Due to this, King Dasharatha took an oath for his Queen Kaikeyi (on her maid, Manthara's insistence) and thus had to exile his favorite son, Lord Rama along with his wife Devi Sita and brother Lakshmana for fourteen years in the forest.
Legal reforms from the 18th century onwards mean that everyone in the United Kingdom now has the right to make a solemn affirmation instead of an oath.
As late as 1880, Charles Bradlaugh was denied a seat as an MP in the Parliament of the United Kingdom because of his professed atheism as he was judged unable to swear the Oath of Allegiance in spite of his proposal to swear the oath as a "matter of form".
If you violate an oath, you shall atone by feeding ten poor people from the same food you offer to your own family, or clothing them, or by freeing a slave.
A prose passage inserted in the eddic poem Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar relates: Hedin was coming home alone from the forest one Yule-eve, and found a troll-woman; she rode on a wolf, and had snakes in place of a bridle.
In Scouting for Boys the movement's founder, Robert Baden-Powell, instructed: "While taking this oath the scout will stand, holding his right hand raised level with his shoulder, palm to the front, thumb resting on the nail of the digitus minimus (little finger) and the other three fingers upright, pointing upwards.
