Lakkhaṇāto

Three short verse pieces under one running head. The Buddhathomanāgāthā, “verses in praise of the Buddha” (CST4 paragraphs 1–267), tells the life in fifty-two verses — the perfections, Vessantara, Tusita, the birth in the Lumbinī grove, the departure, the awakening, the first sermon, the parinibbāna among the Mallas. The Buddhavandanā (268–303) gives each of those events its day of the week in seven verses. The Uṇṇālomikanāthavandanā (304–316) is the one that dwells on the body: the ūrṇā between the brows shining like a diamond, the radiance of the body, the light from the teeth in his gentle smile. The marks themselves have one verse in the life (v. 48); the recitation of the body belongs to the last piece, not the first.

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.