Lakkhaṇāto

Verses on the bodily marks of a Buddha, headed in the text Buddhathomanāgāthā, “verses in praise of the Buddha”. They work through the marks one at a time — the ūrṇā between the brows shining like a diamond, the radiance of the body, the light from the teeth in his gentle smile — turning a doctrinal list into something that can be recited.

The text names no author and no initiator, and that is a fact about the text, not a gap in the searching. A scan of its opening and closing found no ganthārambhakathā, no colophon and no place name anywhere in it, and no source on file names the work. No date can be given.

The Cūḷagandhavaṃsa closes its catalogue by naming this whole class of text and saying what it was for: ime buddhapaṇāmādikā gāthāyo. Attano attano buddhaguṇapakāsanatthāya attano ca pare ca anantapaññāpavattanatthāya ca paṇḍitehi laṅkādīpādīsu viṃsu viṃsu katā — these verses of homage to the Buddha and the like were made by wise men in Laṅkādīpa and elsewhere, each for his own part, to make the Buddha's qualities known and to set boundless understanding going in themselves and in others. Anonymity here is not a loss; it is the genre.