The marks of a great being
Thirty-two extraordinary bodily signs traditionally said to mark out a Buddha or a great world-ruler.
The thirty-two marks (Sanskrit mahāpuruṣalakṣaṇa, "signs of a great person") are a traditional list of remarkable physical features said to appear on the body of a "great being." This idea did not originate with Buddhism; it comes from the wider Indian world, where it was believed that a destined great man would bear such signs and grow up to become either a Buddha (a fully awakened spiritual teacher) or a cakravartin (a righteous universal monarch who rules the world justly).
The list includes details that sound striking to modern ears: feet with level soles, long fingers, a body radiant and golden-hued, a soft tuft of hair between the eyebrows, a slight protrusion at the crown of the head, a wheel-pattern on the palms and soles, and a voice of great beauty and carrying power, among others. Early texts tell how, at the infant Siddhārtha Gautama's birth, a sage examined him, found these marks on his body, and predicted his two possible destinies.
It is worth handling this material as symbol rather than as literal anatomy. These signs function less as a physical description than as a visual language declaring a person's spiritual stature, and they later shaped how Buddha images were sculpted. In that iconic art the cranial bump and the brow-tuft especially became recognizable cues. The marks are not the source of a Buddha's authority; his awakening is. They are the tradition's poetic way of saying that such a being is, body and all, out of the ordinary run of humanity.