Enlightened Being

According to most schools of Buddhism, an enlightened being will tend to manifest a set of thirty-two major physical signs regardless of which sub-category of Buddha it might be. There are also eighty or more minor physical characteristics by which one might determine the specific type of Buddha. Here, we concern ourselves only with the thirty-two major characteristics, some of which overlap each other. These marks are symbolic of certain characteristics of enlightenment or of the historical Buddha's situation. As such they are yet another variety of skillful means, as is the broader project of depicting Buddhist entities. For reference, here is a list of all thirty-two marks of a "great man" (i.e., an enlightened being) according to the Lakshana Sutra:

(1) His feet have a level tread; (2) There are wheels on the soles of his feet; (3) He has projecting heels; (4) He has long fingers and toes; (5) His feet are soft and tender; (6) His hands and feet are webbed; (7) His ankles are like rounded shells; (8) His legs are like an antelope's; (9) His arms are so long that he can touch his knees with his hands without bending; (10) His male organs are concealed within a sheath; (11) His complexion is golden; (12) His skin is so delicate that no dust adheres to his body; (13) The down on his skin grows in single hairs, one to each pore; (14) The down is blue-black and turns upwards in little rings curling to the right; (15) His frame is divinely straight; (16) His body has seven convex surfaces; (17) The font half of his body is like a lion's; (18) There is no furrow between his shoulders; (19) His proportions have the symmetry of a Banyan tree; (20) His bust is equally rounded; (21) His taste is supremely acute; (22) His jaws are like a lion's; (23) He has forty teeth; (24) He has regular teeth; (25) He has continuous teeth; (26) His eye teeth are very lustrous; (27) His tongue is very long; (28) He has a divine voice, like the karavika bird's; (29) His eyes are intensely blue; (30) His eyelashes are like a cow's; (31) Between his eyebrows is a hairy mole (urna), white and soft like cotton down; (32) His head is like a royal turban, with a bump in the middle (ushnisha). (Quoted in Meher McArthur, Reading Buddhist Art: An Illustrated Guide to Buddhist Signs & Symbols [ London: Thames and Hudson, 2002]: p. 95.)