Final Product

The final paper that resulted from the research found in this blog is posted below.  The author hopes that the summary and analysis presented in this paper will allow readers to learn more about this paramount text, the Mahāparinibbāna sutta of the Pāli Canon.  The conclusions drawn in this paper are the author's own, and any reference to or emulation of these ideas in further works should be cited and attributed to this paper.

Themes and Repetitions

Below are themes and repeating passages from the six chapters of the Mahāparinibbāna sutta. The blue text signifies a shared section or theme, the red text indicates a unique section or theme, and the green text connotes a theme that is both shared and unique.

Summaries of Unique Sections

Below are the chapters, sections, summaries, quotes, and topics/themes found in the sections of the  Mahāparinibbāna sutta that are not found in other texts in the Pāli Canon. The section titles are taken from this website, as a helpful and more concise summary of these lengthy passages.

Summaries of Shared Sections

Below are the chapters, sections, summaries, quotes, and topics/themes found in the sections of the  Mahāparinibbāna sutta that are shared with other texts in the Pāli Canon. The section titles are taken from this website, as a helpful and more concise summary of these lengthy passages.

Section Divisions

The breakdown of shared and original section divisions in the Mahāparinibbāna sutta is published below. The basis for these divisions can be found in Sacred Books of the East Volume XI, pages xxxv-xxxvi, where T. W. Rhys Davids lists the texts found in other portions of the Pāli Canon.  From this information, the blog author determined the complementary list of sections that are unique to the Mahāparinibbāna sutta. The list of shared passages includes the other texts in the Pāli Canon where these sections recur.

Overview and Introduction

The Mahāparinibbāna sutta (Sanskrit: Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra), the longest text in the early Theravāda Buddhist Pāli Canon, recounts the death of the Buddha and the events that led up to his final nirvana. This work shares roughly one third of its sections with other texts in the Pāli Canon, while the other two thirds remain unique to this particular text. Using the section divisions determined by T. W. Rhys Davids in Sacred Books of the East Volume XI (pages xxxv-xxxvi of the introduction to "The Book of the Great Decease"), a breakdown of passages that are shared with other texts and passages that are unique to the Mahāparinibbāna sutta can be determined. Davids notes that, in the case of sections that are shared with other texts in the Pāli Canon, it is unclear whether the Mahāparinibbāna sutta is the borrower, the original source, or whether these passages were integrated into the Pāli Canon from earlier sources (Davids xxxiii).

By examining the topics found in the shared and unique sections of this sutra, patterns of importance, both to wider audiences and to the individual(s) who compiled the Mahāparinibbāna sutta, begin to unfold.  

About the Author

The author of this blog, Roxann Giuliano, is a third year undergraduate student of Psychology, Anthropology, and the Study of Religions at the University of California, Los Angeles. Working with Professor Gregory Schopen, Roxann undertook this research venture as a tangential project to his upper division course in Indian Buddhism. The purpose of this blog is to share her data and research so that it may be of aid to any student or scholar who takes an interest in this subject, or in the text of the Mahāparinibbāna sutta as a whole.