________________
19
150
No. 420 in Mackay's list and was formerly ascribed to "Proto-Siva", is taken by Hiltebeitel to belong to "Proto-Mahisa" 151 But, perhaps, it is safer to designate it as proto-Indian as does Sontheimer (1987b: 124). The same padmasanaalso marks the statues of Jinas, whereas standing Buddhas may be adaptions of Yakṣas an association aided by the wellknown fact that the Buddha as well as the Mahāvīra often stayed in or near Yakṣa shrines. Besides, the Buddha,152 as also Indra,153 is called Yaksa himself, and the pipal tree under which the Buddha reached his bodhi is also found on seal No. 335 in Mohenjo Daro.
The marks of the body are a product of brahmanic speculation on the physical externals of the ideal man and were adopted by Jains and Buddhists alike. Initially, they may go back to Nārāyaṇa and Indra, perhaps even to certain pre-Vedic concepts. In the course of the Vedic period prognostic teachings must have developed probably first in a magical context, in order to enable brahmins to ward off evil from the ritual and recitation. Teachings of this kind may have begun in the fourth Veda, as is shown by the Atharvaveda-parisista.
As to the number 32, this, perhaps, has to do with a tradition of 32 154 The ākāras, i.e. parts of the body as found, e.g. in the Pāli Tipitaka.15 references made by Weber (1878: 334 note 5) are of little help, whereas Jolly does not deal with the topic at all in his Medicin. - Besides, the portents at the Bodhisatta's birth are also 32 in number .155 In the Mahabharata, however, there is a list of 16 marks of Nara and Nārāyaṇa, seers in the sphere of Visnu.15 156 Since Burnouf dealt with the lakṣaṇas of the maha purusa he was probably the first to do so in the West - in the 8th Appendix to his translation of the Saddharmapun darikasutra, they have undergone several treatments - complete and partial ones which, however, with one exception, deal with the Buddha. For, only Weber157 compared the person of the Mahavira with the Buddhist lakṣanas described by Burnouf. In doing so he could not but rely on Malayagiri's Sanskrit commentary on the Surapannatti - a representation of the activity of the sun and the moon in the Jaina Siddhânta - for, Leumann was the first scholar to edit the text containing the canonical list of the Jaina lakṣaṇas in his Aupapātika sutra (1883). This list
150 Mackay 1937-38.
151 Hiltebeitel 1978: 767-797, esp. 775 sq.
152 See Bollée 1977: 377.
153 Ja IV 4,11*.
154 DN II 293 sqq. etc. (see CPD s.v. ākāra 7).
155 Ja I 51,3-28 (cf. Lalit [L.] 85,11 - 86,17).
156 Cr. ed. (Poona, 1974) 12,331, 24 sqq.
1571867: 306 sqq. Later (1883: 377 sqq.) he refers to Leumann, yet in his description of the contents of the Aupapatika he does not mention the physical description of the Tīrthamkara at all.