[lit-ideas] Re: Just the facts about the proverbial elephant, ma'am
- From: "Peter D. Junger" <junger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 08 Dec 2005 11:40:29 -0500
Chris Bruce writes:
: On 6. Dez 2005, at 14:33, Mike Geary wrote:
:
: > The FACT is we're all proverbial blind men feeling an elephant.
:
: A long-absent pedant replies:
:
: The 'proverb' (according to some 'a Hindu parable'; others 'an East
: Indian tale of antiquity') is perhaps best known in English through a
: poem (variously titled: 'The Blind Men and the Elephant'; 'Six Blind
: Men and the Elephant') by the American poet John Godfrey Saxe
: (1816-1887):
There is a Buddhist version recorded in the Udana, which was
apparently compiled in the second century b.c.e., in the Pali Canon
that goes like this:
Fable of the Blind Men and the Elephant
A number of disciples went to the Buddha and said, "Sir, there are
living here in Savatthi many wandering hermits and scholars who
indulge in constant dispute, some saying that the world is infinite
and eternal and others that it is finite and not eternal, some saying
that the soul dies with the body and others that it lives on forever,
and so forth. What, Sir, would you say concerning them?"
The Buddha answered, "Once upon a time there was a certain raja who
called to his servant and said, 'Come, good fellow, go and gather
together in one place all the men of Savatthi who were born blind...
and show them an elephant.' 'Very good, sire,' replied the servant,
and he did as he was told. He said to the blind men assembled there,
'Here is an elephant,' and to one man he presented the head of the
elephant, to another its ears, to another a tusk, to another the trunk,
the foot, back, tail, and tuft of the tail, saying to each one that
that was the elephant.
"When the blind men had felt the elephant, the raja went to each of them
and said to each, 'Well, blind man, have you seen the elephant? Tell me,
what sort of thing is an elephant?'
"Thereupon the men who were presented with the head answered, 'Sire, an
elephant is like a pot.' And the men who had observed the ear replied,
'An elephant is like a winnowing basket.' Those who had been presented
with a tusk said it was a ploughshare. Those who knew only the trunk said
it was a plough; others said the body was a grainery; the foot, a pillar;
the back, a mortar; the tail, a pestle, the tuft of the tail, a brush.
"Then they began to quarrel, shouting, 'Yes it is!' 'No, it is not!' 'An
elephant is not that!' 'Yes, it's like that!' and so on, till they came
to blows over the matter.
"Brethren, the raja was delighted with the scene.
"Just so are these preachers and scholars holding various views blind
and unseeing.... In their ignorance they are by nature quarrelsome,
wrangling, and disputatious, each maintaining reality is thus and thus."
Then the Exalted One rendered this meaning by uttering this verse of uplift
O how they cling and wrangle, some who claim
For preacher and monk the honored name!
For, quarreling, each to his view they cling.
Such folk see only one side of a thing.
Udana 68-69
<http://www.kheper.net/topics/blind_men_and_elephant/Buddhist.html>
It is claimed by some that there is an earlier Jain version of this
parable.
--
Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, OH
EMAIL: junger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx URL: http://samsara.law.cwru.edu
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
