![]() ![]() The story is a part of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and Sufi cultures. This parable has been adopted by various religions. People form opinions based on incomplete knowledge. This is to say that people believe something to be true, based on their personal experiences, and seldom go on to see the complete picture before coming to a conclusion. ![]() ![]() They based their opinion of how an elephant is, on their knowledge of the animal, which wasn’t complete. In the story, each blind man touched only a part of the elephant, and believed it to be the whole elephant. At the end of the story, a sighted man (in some versions, a king) explains to the blind men what the elephant is really like and resolves the argument. In different versions, the number of men vary and there are slight variations in what they think about the elephant. In some versions of the story, the argument is never resolved. They argue over what the elephant is like, based on their experience of the animal. ![]() The other blind men touch the tusk, trunk, ear, and tail and believe that the elephant is like a spear, snake, fan, and rope respectively. Another blind man touches its leg and exclaims that the elephant is like a tree. One blind man touches the elephant’s side and claims that the elephant is like a wall. Not knowing what an elephant is like, each of them comes to a different conclusion based on his own experience. Each of them touch different parts of the elephant. A group of blind men encounter an elephant for the first time. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |