Buddha 6

THE MARKS OF A GREAT MAN

Lakkhana Sutta, Dîgha Nikâya

NOTES

This is an extremely condensed version of Sutta 30 of the Dîgha Nikâya, (3: 142-179), namely the Lakkhana Sutta, The Marks (of a great man). It enumerates the thirty-two physical features with which a supreme human leader is endowed. The Buddha’s discourse shows how these various marks are earned by the performance of appropriate good deeds in previous lives; by the principle of karma (Pali kamma) the person is reborn in heaven, and then on earth, to become either a chakravartin (an emperor, a “universal” or “wheel-turning” ruler) or a buddha (a homeless fully-enlightened being). Notice that the “great man” (mahâ-purisa), though superhuman in many respects, is still human, and that applies to buddhas as well as chakravartins, in Theravada tradition as distinct from Mahayana teaching.

The thirty-two marks are divided up among twenty sections, each having a poetic summary attached; all the poems have been omitted here, and only four of the sections are given:

11-16, on mark 1 (level feet), as indication that no enemy may obstruct the Buddha;

17-19, on mark 2 (wheels on soles), indicating a large following of subjects for the ruler, or disciples for the teacher;

20-21, on marks 3,4,15, indicating long life;

22-23, on marks 24,26, shiny even teeth, going with pure followers.

Details about the remaining twenty-five marks can be found in Maurice Walsh’s translation of the Digha Nikaya, Thus Have I heard: The Long Discourses of the Buddha (1987) 441-460. Walshe suggests that the interest of these apparently “unedifying” details is iconographical (some of the marks are depicted on images of the Buddha), and pedogogical (showing the relation between certain types of action and their karmic results).

Another translation, by T.W. Rhys Davids, is found in Sacred Books of the Buddhists, Vol.IV (London 1921), 137-167.