Dialogues of the Buddha, Part II — trans. T. W. and C. A. F. Rhys Davids (1910)

His jaw is as a lion's 8.

He has forty teeth 9,

Regular teeth.

Continuous,

The eye-teeth very lustrous. His tongue is very long 10.

1 He will not stoop, nor lean backward, as if catching at the stars, nor have a crooked spine, but tower up symmetrically like a golden tower-gate in a city of the gods. Cy.

2 The backs of the four limbs, the shoulders and the trunk are well fleshed. Cy.

3 i. e. proportionately broad and full.

4 Citantararhso, lit. he has the shoulder-interval filled up. The Cy. explains, the two sides of the back have no depression in the middle, nor look separated, but from the small of the back upwards the fleshy covering is as a level golden slab.

5 Literally, he has the banyan circumference. It was believed that a banyan always measured the same, like the diameter of a circle, in height as in width.

6 Samavattakkhandho. According to the Cy. the exterior of the whole vocal apparatus is here meant, rather than the trunk or shoulders only.

7 Rasaggasaggi.

8 That is, with the lower jaw relatively fuller than the upper. Cy.

9 That is, the Great Man at a more adult stage has eight more than the normal thirty-two. How the learned brahmins saw these signs in the babe is not explained.

10 See 'Dialogues,' I, 131.

p. 1

He has a divine voice like the karavika-bird's l.

His eyes are intensely blue2,

He has the eyelashes of a cow :;.

Between the eyebrows appears a hairy mole, white and like soft cotton down.

His [19] head is like a royal turban 4.

This too counts to him as one of the marks of a Great
Man5.

33. ' " Endowed, my lord, as is this babe with these two-and-thirty marks of the Great Man, two careers and none other are open to him . . ." [as above, $ 31] . . .

' Thereupon Bandhuman the raja, brethren, let the brahmin soothsayers be invested with new robes and gratified their every desire.

34. ' And Bandhuman the raja, brethren, engaged nurses for the babe Vipassi. Some suckled him, some washed him, some nursed him, some carried him about on their hip. And a white canopy was held over him day and night, for it was commanded : — " Let not cold or heat or straws or dust or dew annoy him ! " And the boy Vipassi, brethren, became the darling and the beloved of the people, [20] even as a blue or red or white lotus is dear to and beloved of all, so that he was literally carried about from lap to lap G.

35. ' And when the boy Vipassi was born, brethren, he had a lovelv voice, well modulated and sweet and

1 According to Childers, the Indian cuckoo. The Great Man's voice is very clear and pure-toned, neither worn nor broken nor harsh. Cy. Yoga-culture is to-day held to yield, as one result, a pleasant musical voice.

2 Like flax-blossom. Cy. Perhaps a tradition of Aryan origin.

3 Completely surrounding the eyes, thick like a black cow's ; bright and soft like a new-born red calf's. Cy.

D. ii. 21. THE SUBLIME STORY. 1 7

charming, just as the voice of the karavika-bird in the mountains of Himaiaya is lovely and sweetly modulated and charming l.

4 U«hisa-siso. This expression, says the Cy., refers to the fullness either of the forehead or of the cranium. In either case the rounded highly-developed appearance is meant, giving to the unadorned head the decorative dignified effect of a crested turban, and the smooth symmetry of a water-bubble.

5 In the text this refrain occurs after the naming of each mark.

6 Literally by hip to hip; women passing him from arm to arm, men from one shoulder to another, explains the Cy.

36. ' And when the boy Vipassi was born, brethren, there was manifested in him the Heavenly Eye born of the result of his karma 2, by the which verily he could see as far as a league by day and eke by night.