Long ago, Ananda, there was a king, by name MahaSudarsana, a king of kings, a righteous man who ruled in righteousness. This Kushinagar, 'Ananda, was the royal city of king MahaSudarsana, under the name of Kusavati, and on the east and on the west it was twelve leagues in length and on the north and on the south it was seven leagues in breadth. These were the words of Buddha to his favourite disciple Ananda, when the latter tried to dissuade him from passing away 'in this little wattle and daub down, in the midst of the jungle, in this branch township' of Kushinagar, the capital of the tribe of the Mallas.
From the words it appears that Kushinagar had a traditional history of prosperity behind it, but at the time of Buddha it was a small town, though there are references to its fortification and gates.

The Pali texts give a list of the Sixteen Mahajanapadas (Great Kingdoms), which are believed to represent the political divisions of north India and part of the Deccan before the time of Buddha. In it occurs the name of the Mallas principality, which is also referred to in the Mahabharata as Malla-rashtra. Many are the legendary princes of the Mallas mentioned in Pali literature; like Raffia of the Ramayatla, who belonged to the lkshvaku lineage. The Mallas evidently developed a republican constitution , some time before the time of Buddha, when it had two branches, respectively at Kushinagar and Pava. The grove of the Mallas where Buddha attained parinirvana is stated to have been situated near the river Hiranyavati.

BUDDHA AND Kushinagar

Go now, Ananda, and enter into Kushinagar, and inform the Mallas of Kushinagar, saying 'This day, O Vasishthas, in the last watch of the night, the final passing away of the Tathagata will take place. Be favourable, herein, 0 Vasishthas, be favourable.

Give no occasion to reproach yourself hereafter, saying, " In our own village did the death of our Tathagata take place, and we took no opportunity of visiting the Tathagata in his last hours".'

These tender words of Buddha from his death-bed bespeak the familiarity and feelings with which he viewed the Mallas in whose territory he chose to pass the last moments of his life. The Mallas had a very high regard for him. In the course of his earlier visits to the place, Buddha had gained a considerable following here as represented by notable converts like Dabba, Bandhula, Mallika and his wife, etc. In one of the visits he had stayed in a grove, called Baliharana, near the town where he preached the two Kusinara-suttas and Kinti-sutta, in which he exhorted the monks to school themselves in the higher lore and in unity and harmony. His close intimacy with the Mallas is easily understandable from the fact that Kushinagar is about 100 km south-east of Lumbini, the place of his birth, and 110 km, as the crow flies of Piprahwa, the ancient site of Kapilavastu. It also fells on the routes connecting the most famous and important cities of the time in northern India which he frequently visited.

THE PARINIRVANA

I too, 0 Ananda, am now grown old, and full of years, my journey is drawing to its close, I have reached my sum of days, I am turning eighty years of age; and just as a worn-out cart, Ananda, can only with much additional care be made to move along, so, methinks, the body of the Tathagata can only be kept going with much additional care.

This spoke Buddha to Ananda while passing a rainy season at a village called Beluva near Vaisali when he was attacked by illness and bodily pain and the effect of old age and of the continuous strain of ceaseless wanderings of nearly half a century for the propagation of his doctrines were telling badly upon his health. After the rains he left Vaisali, the chief town of the republican clan of the Lichchhavis, admired by him. After crossing the land of the Lichchhavis with Ananda, he passed through several villages, till he reached the town of Pava, where he halted for the night in the mango-grove of Chunda, a worker in metals. Next day, he took his meals with Chunda but was almost immediately afterwards taken sick with much pain in his body. Bearing all the ailment with fortitude, he proceeded with Ananda to Kushinagar. On the way, he reached the bank of the Kakutstha, where he bathed and drank water, after crossing which he complained of weariness. The party then moved to the grove of sal trees ( Shorea robusta, Hindi sat) of the Mallas, the upavartana of Kushinagar, on the further side of the Hiranyavati. Realizing that his end was fast approaching, he asked Ananda to prepare a bed for him, with its head to the north, between two sal trees. For Ananda, who, for twenty years past, had most devotedly attended on his master, it was a most trying scene. Buddha spoke to him affectionately and uttered his memorable words on the doctrines of the faith as well as on some rules of discipline to be followed by the monks, including instructions about the disposal of his body .
As desired by Buddha, the Mallas of Kushinagar came and paid their respects to him. The mendicant Subhadra, one hundred and twenty years of age, also came with a view to resolving his doubts and, having heard Buddha, was converted. Immediately after his conversion he passed away with the honour of being the last of Buddha's converts. Buddha then asked the assembled monks to speak out if anyone of them had any doubt and, observing their silence, uttered his last words: 'Bohold thee, brethren, I exhort thee, saying, "Decay is inherent in all component things ! Work out your salvation with diligence". He then fell into a trance and attained parinirvana. It was then the fullmoon night of the month of Vaisakha (April-May).

For the next six days, during which the body lay in state, the Mallas made preparations for a befitting funeral under the directions of Aniruddha, a cousin and follower of Buddha. On the seventh day, they honoured the body with perfumes, garlands and appropriate music. The body was then carried into the town through the northern gate and then out of it through the eastern gate to the Makutabandhanachaitya, the sacred shrine of the Mallas. Here a funeral pile was arranged and the body laid on it for cremation. In the meantime the news had reached Maha-Kasyapa, the most celebrated of Buddha's disciples, who arrived at the scene well in time before the pile was lit. The last ceremonies were performed by him and the body cremated with due honours. The relics of the body were then collected by the Mallas and taken ceremoniously to Kushinagar with a view to enshrining them in stupas.

The news of Buddha's death spread far and wide :
King Ajatasatru of Rajagriha, the Lichchhavis of Vaishali, the Sakyas of Kapilavastu, the Bulis of Alakappa, the Koliyas of Ramagrama and the Mallas of Pava, together with a Brahmana, claimed a share of the relics from the Mallas of Kushinagar and on the latter's refusal were on the point of waging a war for the shares. Apprehending bloodshed, Drona, a wise Brahmana, entreated them for peace and patience and distributed the relics successfully into eight shares; one of them went to the Mallas of Kushinagar, who presumably enshrined it suitably in a stupa in their town with appropriate honours and ceremonies.

SUBSEQUENT HISTORY

There are these four places, Ananda, which the believing man should visit with feelings of reverence and awe. Which are the four ?
The place, Ananda, at which the believing man can say, ' Here the Tathagata was born'.
The Place, Ananda, at which the believing man can say, ' Here the Tathagata attained to the supreme and perfect insight'
The place, Ananda, at which the believing man can say, Here was the kingdom of righteousness set on foot by the Tathagata'
The place, Ananda, at which the believing man can say, ' Here the Tathagata passed finally away in that utter passing away which leaves nothing whatever to remain behind'
In one of his last utterances, Buddha thus named Kushinagar, the site of his parinirvana, as one of the chief places of Buddhist pilgrimage. The other three being  places of his Birth, enlightenment and First Sermon. Its sanctity thus assured, was destined to be a great place of pilgrimage to the Buddhist world. The Mallas had already made a beginning in that direction by erecting a stupa, wherein their share of the relics of Buddha lay enshrined.
For two centuries after the Great Decease, however, Kushinagar does not seem to have risen much in importance. The tiny republic of the Mallas had, in the meantime, been swallowed by the rising empire of Magadha (south Bihar) with its capital at Pataliputra ( modern Patna) , which, in course of time, came to be ruled by a personality of the greatest significance and importance to the history of Buddhism, viz., Ashoka of the Mauryan dynasty (circa 273-236 B.C.). In the course of his pilgrimage to the holy places of Buddhism, Ashoka also visited Kushinagar and, it is said, erected stupas and pillars at the site. What monuments were actually erected by him here and of what size and shape is difficult to say for certain, though we hear more than eight hundred years later from the Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsang that he saw at the place three stupas and two pillars ascribed in his time to that emperor .The excavations at the site, however , have yielded a few structures with unusually large-sized bricks often attributed to the Mauryan age; but their character is uncertain.
Though Kushinagar does not figure much in the history of the following five centuries after Ashoka, there is no doubt that its sanctity and importance grew considerably; for, during this period, Buddhism was not only a very popular and flourishing religion in the whole of India but had also spread rapidly over distant lands. Monumental buildings like stupas and monasteries must, therefore, have been erected here by the faithful, an inference well-supported by excavations : they indicate that there did exist here a sacred monument of this period, obviously a stupa, which, though no longer to be seen, was surrounded by minor stupas and a number of monasteries, some of them still existing in ruins. A Buddhist pilgrim from China, named Fa-hien, visited Kushinagar between A.D. 399 and 414 and found the town with inhabitants 'few and far between comprising only the families belonging to the societies of monks.' He also saw a number of stupas and monasteries marking the holy spots which had once witnessed the memorable events connected with the Great Decease. He thus apparently refers to some of the buildings exposed in the excavations, and from his brief account it appears that Kushinagar was, in his days, essentially a religious township.
At the time of Fahien's visit Kushinagar formed part of the rising empire of the Guptas, under whom India witnessed a most remarkable progress in the fields of art and culture. Buddhism had by now completed a millennium of its progressive existence in the country and was flourishing vigorously, which was reflected at Kushinagar by a greater building activity . In the reign of Kumaragupta (A.D. 413-55), a devout Buddhist of the name of Haribala installed the colossal Nirvana statue of Buddha, now seen in the Nirvana temple and possibly restored or renovated the Main Stupa behind it. Some of the older monasteries were perhaps repaired and new ones erected. It would seem that the establishment of Kushinagar had, under the Guptas, reached the peak of its prosperity and importance.
A century or so later, however, we get a somewhat tragic picture of desertion of the place; as would appear from a more detailed account of Kushinagar given by the famous Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsang, who visited India between A.D. 620 and 644. He found the place in ruins surrounded by an air of gloominess and desolation. The avenues of the town were deserted with only the brick foundations of its walls to be seen.1 He mentions further 'a great brick vihara, in which is a figure of the Nirvana of Tathagata. He is lying with his head to the north as if asleep . By the side of this vihara is a stupa built by Ashoka-raja; although in a ruinous state, yet it is some 60.96 m in height. Before it is a stone pillar to record the Nirvana of Tathagata ; although there is an inscription on it, yet there is no date as to year or month.' In addition to these, the pilgrim refers to other sacred monuments in the locality, such as the stupa built over the place where Subhadra died, another stupa over the cremation-ground, a third one on a spot where Maha-Kasyapa paid his last homage to Buddha's dead body and a fourth one said to have been erected by Ashoka with an inscribed pillar in front recording its construction at the place where the relics were distributed. He also states to have seen about half-a-dozen other stupas marking the spots where the miraculous events connected with the Great Decease were believed to have taken place.

A generation after Hiuen Tsang, another Chinese pilgrim named-tsang visited Kushinagar, but he gives little factual information about the monuments. After he went away we hear no more of Kushinagar from any historical or literary source. With the slow decline of Buddhism in northern India during the subsequent centuries, the place may have suffered its prosperity and importance. Some building activity was, however, still going on, as is evident from the excavated remains. The monasteries continued to survive and to be added to and a few stupas or temples built, though the general decline in the importance of the place was obvious. In about the tenth or eleventh century, in the times of a local chief of the Kalachuri dynasty, a monastery with a chapel attached to it enshrining a colossal statue of the seated Buddha was, no doubt, constructed, as is obvious from an inscriptional record. This statue still stands at the place of its erection under the queer name of Mathakuar installed in a modern shrine. But these were events in the last passing phases of Buddhism in India, for hardly within a century or so thereafter it practically disappeared from the land of its birth. Beyond the frontiers of India it no doubt lived with considerable followings, but the sacred place of the Great Decease seems to have gone beyond the reach of the faithful, to whom its sanctity and greatness were no longer of any living interest. The monuments were deserted and forsaken and were in the midst of a wilderness, left to be buried by the forces of nature and to the whims of a local people, who, as is common and natural, cared only for their bricks to be used in their buildings and for the flattened surfaces of the mounds to be ploughed for their crops. History had drawn its curtain over even the identity of Kushinagar, faint traces of which, however, appear to have been left in the strange stories told of its ruins by the local people and in a somewhat corrupted name of the straggling village of Kasia near by.

After a silence of more than half a millennium, we hear of the place for the first time from the E Buchanan, an officer of east India Company, who visited it in the course of his survey-work early in the last century. He mentions it, by the name of Kasia, as consisting of hardly a hundred huts with a police-station. He saw the ruins and described them, but, like the local people, he was little aware of their identity 'and their possible significance to the Buddhist world. In 1854, H. H. Wilson casually suggested the identity of Kushinagar and Kasia, but it was only Alexander Cunningham, the Archaeological Surveyor, who, in the course of his visit  in 1861-62, could, with his characteristic insight into Buddhist geography, placed the identification on solid grounds.3 The village-name was pronounced to him variously as Kusia or Kasia, instead of the 'Kesiya' of Buchanan. The local names of the ruins and mounds engaged his attention. The main site was called Matha-kuar-ka-kot (instead of Matakumar of Buchanan ) or the fort of Matha-kuar, who, according to local belief, was represented in the large stone image of a seated figure lying unsheltered on a low mound near by. A kilometer and a half to their east lay the large hillock of brick ruins, which, to the people, was known by the name of Ramabhar Tila (or mound). It was difficult for Cunningham to read the correct historical significance behind these names, though he tried to interpret the name Mathakuar to mean the 'dead prince', 1 thus referring, by implication, to Buddha, who had belonged .to the princely family of the Sakyas of Kapilavastu and died at the place. Fifteen years later, Carlleyle, Cunningham's assistant, did extensive digging at the site and completely exposed the great central stupa and, most important of all, discovered, right at its front, the famous reclining statue of Buddha, the Nirvana statue , buried in the debris of the ruins of an oblong shrine.
Though the location of ancient Kushinagar thus appeared to be quite certain, doubts were still raised about its accuracy. Better-planned excavations were, therefore, undertaken by the Archaeological Survey of India in the years 1904 to 1907 under J. Ph. Vogel and in the years 1910 to 1912 by Hirananda Shastri, as a result of which numerous brick buildings were discovered clustering round the great central monuments and representing monasteries and secondary stupas and shrines. These excavations yielded indubitable proofs of the identity of Kushinagar and of the monuments in numerous inscriptional records, viz., seals and a copper- plate, the former referring to the monasteries attached to the monument of the Great Decease (Maha-parinirvana-vihara) and the latter to the stupa or monument of the Great Decease (Parinirvana-chaitya) itself. Strangely enough, none of these records makes any direct mention of the name of Kushinagar or any of its equivalents.

The conclusions of these discoveries were most welcome and heartening to archaeologists and particularly to Buddhists, to whom one of the four most cherished sacred place of Buddhism was thus happily reclaimed. There was consequently a renewal of the religious and cultural activities consistent with the modern times, as is evident from the ever-growing colony of monastic establishments and dharamsalas and attendant educational and cultural institutions seen in the neighbourhood of the holy site. Some of the most sacred monuments were also restored . After the lapse of some seven century Kushinagar is coming to life again.

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