Rta is easiest to see in the Rig Veda's favorite evidences: the dawns. Hymn after hymn marvels that Ushas arrives again, on time, in order, never jostling her sisters, and the poets' word for the track she keeps is rta. The rivers flow by rta; the year turns by it; the cow gives milk and the fire ascends by it. But the same word governs the ritual ground: a sacrifice performed according to rta works, and one that departs from it is mere gesture. And it governs speech: the true word is spoken along rta, the lie is its violation, anrta. This triple coverage, nature, rite and word, is the concept's whole originality. The hymn 10.190 makes the order of dependence explicit at the level of cosmogony: rta and satya, order and truth, are born first, from kindled heat, before the ocean, the year, the sun and moon. Order precedes the things ordered.
The guardians of this order are Mitra and Varuna, invoked as the pair who mount their chariot as gopa rtasya, herdsmen of rta, and Varuna in particular watches oaths and punishes their breach with his snares. Notably, the gods do not create rta; they too travel by it, and their authority consists in keeping its ways. The intuition that the regularity of the world, the efficacy of religion and the bindingness of truth are one fact, with even heaven subject to it, is rta's bequest to everything downstream.