Chongfeng Li
Department of Archaeology, Peking University, Beijing, China
Buddha’s parinirvāņa and related events or episodes such as the cremation of his body (jhāpita or dhyāpita) and the distribution of his remains (dhātu-vibhańga) were generally portrayed on the rear chambers of almost all the cental-pillar-caves (chētiyagharas) at Kizil, Kucha. For instance, his entry into nirvāņa was regularly depicted on the rear wall of the rear chamber, the cremation of his body on the opposite wall, and the distribution of his remains on the sidewall with right angle to the cremation tableau. These representations indicate that Buddha’s parinirvāņa and related events were popularized in ancient Kucha.
In terms of the final events of Śākyamuni Buddha’s life and what took place after his death, there are numerous records in the Buddhist canon, such as Pāli Mahāparinibhāna suttanta, Sanskrit Mahāparinirvāņa sūtra as well as the Gāndhārī and Chinese versions of the above text. The Sanskrit Mahāparinirvāņa sūtra in the Dīrghāgama edition of the text of the Sarvāstivādins is fundamentally based on numerous fragments found from Xinjiang (Chinese central Asia). A small fragment from Xinjiang of a Gāndhārī Mahāparinirvāņa sūtra has come to light recently from S.F. Oldenburg Collection in the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg, which seems to belong to the Dharmaguptakas. However, the Pāli Mahāparinibhāna suttanta in the Dīgha Nikāya is the original or the oldest version of the text, and the Sūtra of Preaching Travels contained in the Chinese version of the Long Āgama Sūtra (长阿含经，Chang’ahanjing), an exact correspondence to a parallel Gāndhārī version that has been ascribed to the Dharmaguptakas, is relatively complete besides the Pāli original.
On the basis of some new discoveries, a Prakrit version which is closely related to the Chinese Chang’ahanjing could well have been the literary source of the Buddha’s parinirvāņa and related events or episodes portrayed in the Kizil murals.
(Presented in the International Conference – Buddhist Narrative in Asia and Beyond, 9-11 August 2010, Imperial Queen's Park Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Institute of Thai Studies, Chulalongkorn University with support from The Thailand Research Fund (TRF), in co-operation with Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Institute of Asian Studies, The Confucius Institute, Chulalongkorn University and l’École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO))