Note 117 — TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.

For a description of these marks see the Dharmasangraha, pp. 53 ff. A process of mystifying or deifying the person of Buddha seems to have been going on immediately after the death of the Master; and the Mahâyânistic conception of Nirmânakâya and Sambhogakâya is merely the consummation of this process. Southern Buddhists who are sometimes supposed to represent a more “primitive” form of Buddhism describe just as much as Mahâyânism the thirty-two major and eighty minor excellent physical marks of a great man as having been possessed by Çâkyamuni, (for instance, see the Milindapañha, S. B. E. Vol. XXXV. p. 116). But any person with common sense will at once see the absurdity of representing any human being with those physical peculiarities. And this seems to have inspired more rational Mahâyânists to abandon the traditional way of portraying the human Buddha with those mysterious signs. They transferred them through the doctrine of Trikâya to the characterisation of the Sambhogakâya Buddha, that is, to the Buddha enjoying in a celestial abode the fruit of his virtuous earthly life. The Buddha who walked in the flesh as the son of King Suddhodana was, however, no more than an ordinary human being like ourselves, because he appeared to us in a form of Nirmânakâya, i.e. as a Body of Transformation, devoid of any such physical peculiarities known as thirty-two or eighty lakṣanas. Southern Buddhists, so called, seem, however, to have overlooked the ridiculousness of attributing these fantastic signs to the human Buddha; and this fact explains that as soon as the memory of the personal disciples of Buddha about his person vanished among the later followers, intense speculation and resourceful imagination were constantly exercised until the divers schools settled the question each in its own way. (return)