Kushinagar

01Between the sal trees

The Mahaparinibbana Sutta follows the Buddha’s last walk from Vaishali, through Pava, where he ate his last meal at the house of Chunda the smith, to the sal grove of the Mallas at Kusinara. Ananda asked why he would pass away in such a small town, and the Buddha told him that it had once been Kushavati, the great royal city of King Mahasudassana. Lying on his right side with his head to the north, he gave his last words: all conditioned things pass; work out your own liberation with diligence. The Mallas cremated him with royal honours, and his relics were divided into eight shares among the kings and clans who came for them. Theravada reckoning places the Mahaparinirvana in 544/543 BCE.

02The reclining Buddha

Xuanzang came in the 630s and found the town in ruins, with a brick vihara over a reclining image. The site was forgotten until A. C. L. Carlleyle of the Archaeological Survey cleared the main mound in 1876 and found the image itself: just over six metres long, with an inscription on its base naming the monk Haribala as its donor in the 5th century. A Burmese monk, U Chandramani, lived here and restored worship in the early 20th century. The present Mahaparinirvana temple was built for the 2,500th Buddha Jayanti in 1956, and the stupa behind it covers the old one. An international airport opened at Kushinagar in 2021.

The life of this place