Or che negli altri giri Tu godi, a te si deve onor, non lutto:

In the first passage in the Mahâva[.n] sa, three Nigha[n.][t.]as are introduced by name, Jotiya, Giri, and Kumbha[n.][d.]a.

In its original and unalloyed sense, it meant duty, pure and simple,hence, we speak of the Giri we owe to parents, to superiors, to inferiors, to society at large, and so forth.

In these instances Giri is duty; for what else is duty than what Right Reason demands and commands us to do.

Should not Right Reason be our categorical imperative? Giri primarily meant no more than duty, and I dare say its etymology was derived from the fact that in our conduct, say to our parents, though love should be the only motive, lacking that, there must be some other authority to enforce filial piety; and they formulated this authority in Giri.

Should not Right Reason be our categorical imperative? Giri primarily meant no more than duty, and I dare say its etymology was derived from the fact that in our conduct, say to our parents, though love should be the only motive, lacking that, there must be some other authority to enforce filial piety; and they formulated this authority in Giri.

Giri thus understood is a severe taskmaster, with a birch-rod in his hand to make sluggards perform their part.

Because of this very artificiality, Giri in time degenerated into a vague sense of propriety called up to explain this and sanction that,as, for example, why a mother must, if need be, sacrifice all her other children in order to save the first-born; or why a daughter must sell her chastity to get funds to pay for the father's dissipation, and the like.

Starting as Right Reason, Giri has, in my opinion, often stooped to casuistry.

I might say of Giri what Scott wrote of patriotism, that "as it is the fairest, so it is often the most suspicious, mask of other feelings."

Carried beyond or below Right Reason, Giri became a monstrous misnomer.