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I've corrected some of the references but I think not all repetitions, and I don't know Wikipedia's referencing format so they may not be technically formatted correctly for Wikipedia, but they do at least make sense now. Udana is the name of a book. 6.4 is the chapter and sutta/sutra number. Normally within Buddhist texts the intra-textual referencing is to sutta/ sutra names, not books and numbers, so in this case it's the Tittha sutta. A good non-sectarian source for primary text references is suttacentral.net, which is a comparative correspondence index of all the available different ancient language recensions and many translations. It also makes clearer the structure and history of the texts. Referencing to page numbers of the PTS edition is only handy if you're in a university or somewhere with the print edition books, which are not online, and it falsely implies that the Pali / Theravada recension is the only or primary one, which is a sectarian bias. E.g. for the Tittha sutta/sutra there are two Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit recensions, one of which was likely transmitted by the Mulasarvastivadin school, as it was later translated into Tibetan. KesterR ( talk) 22:44, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
About the "Blind Men" print to the right side of the page, how can that have been published in the 1880's if Hanabusa Itchō died a century before? PeterTheWall ( talk) 01:14, 19 September 2008 (UTC) YES THAT IS A BIG PROBLEM! SOME ONE FACT CHECK THIS!
Started the article but you do not even know that this story is originally from hindu panchtantra supposed to be written in 200-300 BC by a Brahmin Pandit Vishnu Sharma, that went to Arab world through translation. Deliberately keeping Hinduism at the end and not giving original source of history of this parable. Dishonest and/or false presentation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.205.42.232 ( talk) 06:54, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
Nice article, well done! Glad to see the nasty comments some people made in one of your discussions didn't discourage you! I'm making a few minor edits, though. IamthatIam 19:34, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Sam Gross, U.S. cartoonist best known for his work in the National Lampoon, published several collections, one of which (1982) was titled after a panel cartoon depicting the blind men...one of whom was elbow-deep in dung, making the astute observation "An Elephant is Soft and Mushy!"
I looked up this story as a means to explain to students that to have a complete representation of reality you can't rely on a partial reading, through a single observation, but you must integrate or sum up different sources and points of view. I find it strange that the main conclusions to the story go in the opposite direction, that a correct reading of reality is out of reach, unattainable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hepf ( talk • contribs) 18:41, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
http://www.noogenesis.com/pineapple/blind_men_elephant.html says so, though I am unsure of its credibility.
Then there's this earlier Discordian version, from Illuminatus!:
-- FOo ( talk) 08:34, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Is there a serious dispute? The Buddhist version is in the Udana, an ancient text (long before Sufis were invented). As far as I can tell, the Jain sources are much later. Peter jackson ( talk) 10:34, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
Bayer is a german company: http://www.bayer.com/en/imprint.aspx HenryCauthon ( talk) 22:21, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
Isn't there a tale in one of the epilogues of War and Peace (here: http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/war_and_peace/356/, where people are asked what makes a railway locomotive move? It seems quite similar to this tale, so perhaps include it in Modern Treatments? Murukesh Mohanan ( talk) 20:51, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
Can we have a citation for the Heisenberg quote? Lestrade ( talk) 13:41, 14 October 2012 (UTC)Lestrade
Yeah so the Bhuddah spoke English and liked to write in rhymes! Cool. Also... someone might want to check the sources for accuracy or at the very least move modern interpretations to the modern interpretation section. 68.42.144.46 ( talk) 21:06, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
I'd love it if this line from the article is true - does anyone have a source for it?
"We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning." - Werner Heisenberg
85.255.234.245 ( talk) 20:36, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
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Hi All, the external link: Buddhist Version as found in Jainism and Buddhism. Udana hosted by the University of Princeton at http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~rywang/berkeley/258/parable.html returns a 404 not found and should be deleted. Alivebeing ( talk) 09:57, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
I have never read of an attempt to relate the parable of the blind men and the elephant to the expression “seeing the elephant”. Both seem to have ancient roots and pertain to the acquisition of broader knowledge from a position of limited subjective experience. 65.128.179.126 ( talk) 15:55, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
@ Quercus solaris:: I'm inclined to agree with Dcouzin about whether this parable's relationship with "ontologic reasoning" should be mentioned in the first sentence of this article. Per the Manual of Style's guidance on the lead section, we should be avoiding "difficult-to-understand terminology and symbols" in the introduction, and "ontologic reasoning" is difficult to understand. This parable shows up in many childrens' books all over the world, so it shouldn't be that hard for us to avoid links to " ontology" in the first paragraph, should it? -- RobLa ( talk) 03:51, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
Short story 102.212.128.37 ( talk) 11:42, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
who is the author 41.13.12.49 ( talk) 17:18, 14 August 2023 (UTC)