Purusharthsiddhyupay English

SR No.: 001105
Original Sutra Author: Amrutchandracharya
Author: Ajit Prasad
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown
Publication Year: 1933
Total Pages: 160
Language: English, Sanskrit
Classification: Book_English, Ethics, & Principle
File Size: 11 MB

Page 66

PURUSHARTHA-SIDDHYUPAYA
Commentary. The phrase palgalaura, refers to the well-known illustration of the various different conceptions which a number of congenitally blind persons, who had not known an elephant, came to entertain of the shape of an elephant, when they happened to stumble against the animal.
One who caught hold of the ear declared that the elephant was like a big palm-leaf fan. He who seized the leg insisted that the animal was like a pillar, while the one who caught the tail maintained that the elephant was like a big hard rope. And again the person who touched the trunk affirmed strongly that it was like an extraordinary big cobra, which hissed but did not bite. Each of them maintained that his own conception was the right one, and the others were wrong. The fact was that each of them had only grasped a portion of the body of the elephant, and formed only a partial conception, which though true, so far as it went, was not the whole truth. Each one of them had a limited, but not a perfect knowledge of the elephant as a whole. The man with eyes who could see the whole of the elephant all at once, explained to each one of the blind persons, that though correctly asserting a part, he was ignorant of the whole truth; and thus set at rest the wrangling amongst the imperfectly informed persons, who assailed each other as wrong and untrue, while not one of them knew the whole truth.
The vast majority of philosophers are so very much engrossed in their own theories that they would not care to look beyond. Each is so very partial, one-sided and prejudiced, that he would not, like a person born blind, examine the other systems. Looking at things from different angles of vision, each has been disputing with the others, asserting his own system to be correct, and the others wrong. Such disputations among the various systems of philosophy are reconciled by the all-embracing all-encompassing Anekant, the Universal System, the all-comprehensive Science of Thought.
After doing obeisance to the Supreme Intelligence, the Pure and the Highest Self, the Parmatma, the fountain-head of all knowledge, of all Scripture, of all Revelation, the author, here offers salutation to the Revealed Knowledge, the Highest System of philosophy, the Universal Truth, which reconciles, encompasses, assimilates all partial systems, incomplete, one-sided, and hence jarring and contradictory among themselves.