This idiom comes from a book called Baiyujing, which uses stories to teach lessons. It has early versions in Buddhist and Hindu texts.
The story is about several blind men who have never seen an elephant before. They want to know what the elephant is like by touching it. Each man touches only one part of the elephant, like its trunk, ear, or leg. Each one describes the elephant based on what he touched, so they all have different ideas of what the elephant is like. Sometimes, they even think the others are lying and get upset.
This idiom means that someone’s experience might be true, but it might not be the whole truth. So, you can’t decided what something is like just by seeing a part of it.
Source: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Poems_of_John_Godfrey_Saxe/The_Blind_Men_and_the_Elephant
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