Snapshots of the Past

[Blind monks examining an elephant] – Historic Print

[Blind monks examining an elephant] — historic print
[Blind monks examining an elephant]. Historic print from the Japanese Prints collection.

(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)

Description

Few images capture their era like this historic print of [Blind monks examining an elephant]. An authentic image from the Library of Congress, it carries the weight of the real historical record.

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[Blind monks examining an elephant]

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Six blind monks, each gripping a different part of an elephant, illustrate a parable that Japanese printmakers borrowed from Buddhist teaching. The story, in which each man describes the animal by the one part he touches and so misses the whole, came to Japan from India along with the sutras that carried it. This color woodcut dates from roughly 1814 to 1878, the years spanning the late Edo period and the early Meiji era, when such moral tales were popular subjects for illustrated prints. The humor of the scene lies in the exaggerated poses and the monks' confident misreadings of what they feel.

Medium1 print (2 pages) : woodcut, color.
Genredreams and substances
Notes[between 1814 and 1878]
SubjectsBuddhist monks--Japan--1810-1880. Parables--Japan--1810-1880. Blind persons--Japan--1810-1880. Elephants--Japan--1810-1880.
SourceLibrary of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Original scan3,674 × 4,564 px · prints to 12 × 15 in at 300 dpi
ReferenceAMZ-SOTP-HPA-222092

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