Tribes in Ancient India c53.114

c53.114

At the time of which we are speaking, the Mallas appear to have been divided into two confederacies, ‘one with headquarters at Pāvā, and the other with headquarters at Kuśīnārā’, as we see from the *Mahāparinibbāna Suttanta*.⁴ There is reason to believe that in the Buddha’s time Kuśīnārā was not a city of the first rank, like Rājagṛha, Vaiśālī, or Śrāvastī. When the Lord expressed to Ānanda his desire to die at Kuśīnārā, Ānanda said to him, ‘Let not the Exalted One die in this little wattle-and-daub town, in this town in the midst of the jungle, in this branch township....’ The fact that the Buddha hastened to Kuśīnārā from Pāvā during his last illness indicates that the distance between the two towns was not great; but the description in the *Mahāparinibbāna Suttanta* does not enable us to make any accurate estimate. Kuśīnārā has been identified by Cunningham with the village of Kāsiā in the east of the Gorakhpur district,⁵ and this view has recently been strengthened by the fact that in the stūpa behind the Nirvāṇa temple, near this village, a copperplate has been discovered, bearing the inscription ‘(parini)rvāṇa-caitya-tāmra-patta’, or ‘the copperplate of the parinirvāṇa-caitya’. This identification appears to be correct, although V. A. Smith would prefer to place Kuśīnārā in Nepal, beyond the first range of hills.⁶ Rhys Davids expresses the opinion that, if we may trust the Chinese pilgrims, the territory of the Mallas of Kuśinārā and Pāvā was on the mountain slopes to the east of the Śākya land and to the north of the Vajjian confederation. But some would place their territory south of the Śākyas and east of the Vajjians.¹ It is a considerable distance from Kāsiā in the Gorakhpur district to Pāvāpuri of the Jainas in the Patna district, and one so ill as the Buddha was not likely to go such a distance on foot. Therefore Pāvā of the Buddhist books appears to have been distinct from Pāvāpuri, and situated not very far from Kāsiā.