405 BC

Parinirvana

The Buddha's final passing at Kusinārā

Among his last instructions was an act of protection for someone else: make sure nobody blames Cunda for the meal that preceded the illness.

483 BCE is a tradition, not a record

483 BCE is a traditional date, and 486 BCE circulates alongside it. Neither comes from a contemporary record: modern scholarship commonly places the death around 405 BCE, and the exact year remains disputed.

The estimates cluster rather than converge. A recent Oxford survey puts the Buddha's life in the middle of the fifth century BCE and his death sometime before 400, while acknowledging that reliable dating evidence is scarce.

The majority of scholars represented at a major 1988 chronology symposium placed the death within roughly twenty years of 400 BCE. There is no agreed exact year.

The canonical account of the last day

In the Mahāparinibbāṇa Sutta the Buddha falls severely ill after a meal offered by Cunda at Pāvā, and still tells Ānanda: come, let us go to Kusinārā.

At the Mallas' sal grove at Upavattana near the town, Ānanda prepares a couch between two sal trees with the Buddha's head toward the north.

He addresses the assembled mendicants and gives a final exhortation; then, in the tradition's account, comes the passing through successive meditative states, and parinibbāna in the last watch of the night.

What the text will and will not support

The last dish, sūkara-maddava, is textually and linguistically disputed, and translating it confidently as pork or as poisonous mushrooms goes past the evidence. The narrative sequence does not establish that the food caused the death.

The sutta is a religious and literary tradition transmitted over generations, not a contemporary eyewitness record. Its concrete details are canonical tradition rather than independently verified reportage.

The Mallas honoured the body for seven days before cremation. When several rulers and communities claimed the relics, the brahmin Doṇa divided them into eight portions, with separate monuments raised over the urn and the embers.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 6 sources 2 audit passes, 1 issue open Date disputed

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

Date disputed. Sources disagree; the research places it at ~-405.

What the sources leave uncertain

483 BCE is a traditional date, not the strongest modern historical estimate. Traditional chronologies also give 486 BCE and other years.
A recent Oxford survey says historians generally place the Buddha’s life in the middle of the fifth century BCE and his death sometime before 400 BCE, while acknowledging that reliable dating evidence is scarce.
The majority of scholars represented at a major 1988 chronology symposium placed the death within roughly twenty years of 400 BCE; there is no agreed exact year.
The Mahāparinibbāṇa Sutta is a religious and literary tradition transmitted over generations, not a contemporary eyewitness record. Its concrete details must be identified as canonical tradition rather than independently verified reportage.