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PROLEGOMENA TO PRAKRITICA et JAINICA
in the Udānasūtra of the Pali canon as well as in philosophical treatises of the Jains. This is the story of the 'Parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant' (popularly known as andha-gaja-nyāya). There were certain blind men who experienced an elephant, and when they were asked to describe the elephant, each of them described the elephant in accordance with the experience he had with regard to the limbs of the elephant which he happened to have felt. Each one is right with regard to his experiences of the elephant, but each one's experiences are not the whole truth. The Udānasūtra says
imesu kira sajjasti eke samana-brāhmaṇā/ viggaha naṁ vivadasti janā ekānga-dassinoll
Here theekāngadassino indicates those blind men who see only a single limb of the elephant.
This simple story indicates that the truth or the pathways of Reality can be investigated from different angles of vision. This simple story also indicates the manysidedness of Truth, the multiple nature of Reality.
Though the Jains are the pioneers in their theory of relativity, the Buddhists as well as the Sanskrit writers are not completely devoid of this principle and the consistency of contradictories. The andha-gaja-nyāya found in almost all the systems of Indian philosophy shows that the possibility of a partial truth of apparent contradictories is acknowledged by all the systems of philosophy. But the Jains say that their philosophy only visualises the whole truth (sakalādeśa), while the other systems only possess the broken truth (vikalādeśa). These two contradictories are the essence of anekāntavāda. It is a fact worth noting that though the two sects, i.e., Svetāmbaras and Digambaras, differ in many respects, but with regard to the theory of relativity they do not. For the origin of the concept of anekānta, the Svetāmbara canons can help very little, though one or two references are found.
As far as the development of anekāntavāda is
