[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Reference works](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.reference) › [Dictionary of Pali Proper Names](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.reference.malalasekera-1937) › v2.c31.1802 # Dictionary of Pali Proper Names v2.c31.1802 Dictionary of Pāli Proper Names v2.c31.1802 - **Language:** English ### [v2.c31.1802](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.reference.malalasekera-1937.v2.c31.1802) The theory of Mahāpurisa is pre-Buddhistic. Several passages in the Piṭakas² mention brahmins as claiming that this theory of the Mahāpurisa and its natal marks belonged to their stock of hereditary knowledge. The Buddhists, evidently, merely adopted the brahmin tradition in this matter as in so many others. But they went further. In the Lakkhaṇa Sutta³ they sought to explain how these marks arose, and maintained that they were due entirely to good deeds done in a former birth and could only be continued in the present life by means of goodness. Thus the marks are merely incidental; most of them are so absurd, considered as the marks of a human being, that they are probably mythological in origin, and a few of them seem to belong to solar myths, being adaptations to a man, of poetical epithets applied to the sun or even to the personification of human sacrifice. Some are characteristic of human beauty, and one or two may possibly be reminiscences of personal bodily peculiarities possessed by some great man, such as Gotama himself. - [Previous: v2.c31.1801](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.reference.malalasekera-1937.v2.c31.1801) - [Next: v2.c31.1803](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.reference.malalasekera-1937.v2.c31.1803) - [Up: v2.c31](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.reference.malalasekera-1937.v2.c31) --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.reference.malalasekera-1937.v2.c31.1802](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.reference.malalasekera-1937.v2.c31.1802) · Pramāṇa