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.  

A note on translation: Sanskrit and Pāli are very closely related languages, generally differing only slightly in pronunciation. This text was originally written in Pāli, so I have stuck to the Pāli title of Mahāparinibbāna sutta, although the Sanskrit pronunciation, Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, may be useful to keep in mind for those who are familiar with the terms "nirvana" and "sutra."  Mahāparinibbāna sutta breaks down as follows:
Mahā = "great"; pari = "final"; nibbāna = "nirvana," ("blowing out," commonly interpreted as "enlightenment"); and sutta = sutra, or doctrine.

The blog author's thesis for this project is as follows:

"The themes found in the sections of the Mahāparinibbāna sutta that are shared with other texts in the Pāli Canon may indicate which factors of the final portions of the Buddha's life held the most meaning or historical significance to the wider context of early Theravāda Buddhist textual traditions; in contrast, those themes and topics that are unique to this text may signify which elements of the Buddha’s final months carried the most importance to the compilers of the Mahāparinibbāna sutta, independent of what was included in other texts in the Pāli Canon."

The sources for this project are listed below:

• Source for chapter divisions: original Mahāparinibbāna sutta text, from the Sutta Pitaka of the Theravāda Buddhist Pāli Tipiṭaka (Pāli Canon)
• Source for section divisions: T. W. Rhys Davids, Sacred Books of the East Volume XI, xxxv-xxxvi
• Full citation for Davids introduction:
• Davids, T. W. Rhys. "Introduction to the Book of the Great Decease."
       Introduction to Buddhist Suttas, xxxi-xlviii. Edited by Max Muller. Vol. XI 
       of The Sacred Books of the East. New York: Clarendon Oxford Press, 1900.
• Full citation for Davids translation of Mahāparinibbāna sutta:
• "The Book of the Great Decease: Maha-parinibbana-sutta." In Buddhist Suttas, 
       edited by Max Muller, 1-136. Translated by T. W. Rhys Davids. Vol. XI of 
       The Sacred Books of the East. New York: Clarendon Oxford Press, 1900. 

The author of this blog hopes that these posts will enable readers to gain a greater understanding of one of the most monumental texts of early Theravāda Buddhism.