Mahaparinirvana Sutra

The Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra (traditional Chinese: 大般涅槃經, Tibetan: མྱང་འདས་ཀྱི་མདོ་) or Nirvana Sutra is a Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit text which is one of the Tathāgatagarbha sūtras of Mahāyāna Buddhism. It originated in the first century CE in Andhra, India, and was substantially expanded by the Chinese translator Dharmakṣema in the fifth century CE. Its teachings on the Buddha-nature and the possibility for all sentient beings to attain Buddhahood had a great impact on East Asian Buddhism.

The text of the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra in the original Sanskrit has survived only in a number of fragments, which were discovered in Central Asia, Afghanistan and Japan. It exists in Chinese and Tibetan versions of varying lengths. There are four extant versions of the sūtra, each translated from various Sanskrit editions:

According to Hodge, some other versions have also existed:

According to Shimoda Masahiro, the authors of the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra were leaders and advocates of stupa-worship. The term buddhadhātu originally referred to śarīra or physical relics of the Buddha. The authors of the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra used the teachings of the Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra to reshape the worship of the śarīra into worship of the inner Buddha as a principle of salvation: the Buddha-nature. "Buddhādhatu" came to be used in place of tathagatagarbha, referring to a concrete entity existing inside the person. Sasaki, in a review of Shimoda, conveys a key premise of Shimoda's work, namely, that the origins of Mahayana Buddhism and the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra are entwined.

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