The marks of a great man

The king said: ‘Is it true, Nāgasena, that the Buddha was endowed with the thirty-two bodily marks of a great man, and graced with the eighty subsidiary characteristics; that he was golden in colour with a skin like gold, and that there spread around him a glorious halo of a fathom’s length?’
‘Such, O king, was the Blessed One.’
‘But were his parents like that?’
‘No, they were not.’
‘In that case you must say that he was born so. But surely a son is either like his mother, or those on The mother’s side, or he is like his father, or those on the father’s side!’
The Elder replied: ‘Is there such a thing, O king, as a lotus flower with a hundred petals?’
‘Yes, there is.’
‘Where does it grow up?’
‘It is produced in mud, and in water it comes to perfection.’
‘But does the lotus resemble the mud of the lake, whence it springs up, either in colour, or in smell, or in taste?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Then does it resemble the water?’
‘Nor that either.’
‘Just so, great king, is it that the Blessed One had the bodily signs and marks you have mentioned, though his parents had them not.’
‘Well answered, Nāgasena!’