The quest for a scientific approach to mythology was hampered until the end of the last century by the magnitude of the field and scattered character of the evidence. The conflict of authorities, theories, and opinions that raged in the course, particularly, of the nineteenth century, when the ranges of knowledge were expanding in every field of research (classical and Oriental scholarship, comparative philology, folklore, Egyptology, Bible criticism, anthropology, etc.) resembled the mad tumult of the old Buddhist parable of "The Blind Men and the Elephant." The blind men feeling the animal's head declared, "An elephant is like a water pot"; but those at his ears, "He is like a winnowing basket"; those at his tusks, "No, indeed, he is like a plowshare"; and those at his trunk, "He is like a plow pole." There were a number feeling his belly. "Why," they cried, "he is like a storage bin!" Those feeling his legs argued that he was like pillars; those at his rectum, that he was like a mortar; those at his member, that he was like a pestle; while the remainder, at his tail, were shouting, "An elephant is like a fan." And they fought furiously among themselves with their fists, shouting and crying, "This is what an elephant is like , that is not what an elephant is like"; "This is not what an elephant is like; that is what an elephant is like."
"And precisely so," then runs the moral of the Buddha, "the company of heretics, monks, Brahmans, and wandering ascetics, patient of heresy, delighting in heresy, relying upon the reliance of heretical views, are blind, without eyes: knowing not good, knowing not evil, knowing not right, knowing not wrong, they quarrel and brawl and wrangle and strike one another with the daggers of their tongues, saying, 'This is right, that is not right'; 'This is not right, that is right.' " 3
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