For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said, 'This being is like a thick snake'. So, they sought it out, and when they found it they groped about it. Out of curiosity, they said: 'We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable'. The parable has several Indian variations, but broadly goes as follows: Ī group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. The earliest versions of the parable of blind men and elephant is found in Buddhist, Hindu and Jain texts, as they discuss the limits of perception and the importance of complete context. 7 The meaning as proverb by country or domain.The story has been published in many books for adults and children, and interpreted in a variety of ways. The tale later became well known in Europe, with 19th century American poet John Godfrey Saxe creating his own version as a poem, with a final verse that explains that the elephant is a metaphor for God, and the various blind men represent religions that disagree on something no one has fully experienced. The story also appears in 2nd millennium Sufi and Baháʼí Faith lore.

In its various versions, it is a parable that has crossed between many religious traditions and is part of Jain, Hindu and Buddhist texts of 1st millennium CE or before. They then describe what it is they have experienced. Īn alternative version of the parable describes sighted men, experiencing a large statue on a dark night, or feeling a large object while being blindfolded. 500 BCE, during the lifetime of the Buddha. The Buddhist text Tittha Sutta, Udāna 6.4, Khuddaka Nikaya, contains one of the earliest versions of the story. The parable originated in the ancient Indian subcontinent, from where it has been widely diffused. The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people's limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true. In some versions, they come to suspect that the other person is dishonest and they come to blows. They then describe the elephant based on their limited experience and their descriptions of the elephant are different from each other. Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant's body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. It is a story of a group of blind men who have never come across an elephant before and who learn and imagine what the elephant is like by touching it. The parable of the blind men and an elephant is a story that illustrates ontologic reasoning. Blind Men Appraising an Elephant by Ohara Donshu, Edo Period (early 19th century), Brooklyn Museum

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