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sure, the elephant is like a big winnowing fan." Another blind man said: "No, my dear sir, you are wrong. The elephant is like a big round post." The third: "You are all mistaken; it is like a tapering stick." The rest gave their different opinions. The proprietor of the elephant said: "My friends, you are all mistaken. You have not examined the elephant from all sides. Had you done so, you would not have taken one sided views." In that symbol the Jains show that no one should preach that a ceatain religion is the whole truth. There is a Jain saying which means that the six schools of philosophy are part and parcel of one organic whole, but if one is taken by itself it becomes a false doctrine.
There is another symbol of the Jains, and that is the mango tree and six persons. They were members of the same club. They wanted to taste the mango fruit, and went to a mango grove. They approached a ceration tree, and one said: "These are very beautiful and very delicious, and we must cut down the tree." Another said: "We don't want all the mangoes, let us cut the principal branch. And another said: "Let us take a smaller branch." And another "We don't want even so many, we will take one minor branch, that will be enough for The last said: "We don't want even so many. What is the use of destroying or cutting the tree:
us."
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