How Did the Buddha Die ? ( if he ever did)

By Dr. Robert C L Law

Introduction

Traditionally, the historical Buddha is supposed to have lived in ancient India between 566 to 486 BCE. However, recent evidence has put the time of death of the Buddha at around 404 BCE, with the earliest possible date to be 422 BCE and the latest possible, 399 BCE ( Note 1). The passing away of the Buddha ( Note 2) has been depicted widely in Buddhist arts and iconography. Many sculptural relief and paintings have the Buddha lying on his right side and resting his head on his right hand, surrounded by grieving monks and various dignitaries, deities and animals. The most complete account of the last days of the Buddha is in the Mahāpariinibbāna Sutta ( Discourse on the Great Deceased ) from the Dīgha-Nikāya ( Long Discourse) of the Pāli Tipiṭaka. This sutta( Sanskrit: Sūtra) contains a very detailed story of what happened to the Buddha, starting from a few months before his death to a graphic description of his symptoms prior to his passing away, from which many scholars have developed different theories about the cause of his death. While the controversy is far from settled, it would be interesting to note how these theories have developed.

What Exactly Did the Buddha Eat

Almost all Buddhists agree that the Buddha died from some kind of food poisoning (although the term poisoning may mean different things to different people). According to the Pāli Canon account, the last meal that the Buddha had was at the house of a metalworker called Cunda at a village called Pava in a country ( probably more like a province) called Malla (未羅國). There, he gave a sermon to Cunda who served him and his entourage of bikkhus a meal of a food called sukara-maddava the next day. If you ask any Chinese Buddhist who has studied only Chinese Buddhist texts, he will tell you that the Buddha died from eating a poisonous mushroom (栴檀耳) which can be literally translated as some mushroom which grow on the bark of the tree called 栴檀. However, modern scholars have pointed out that the original word sukura-maddava for the food that the Buddha ate really mean soft pork ( strictly, a high grade meat from a wild boar which is of just the right softness). The Chinese Buddhists, being vegetarians and unable to accept that the Buddha died from eating meat, had translated the word sukura-maddava to mean a kind of mushroom which was the favourite food of the wild boar. However, modern scholars have generally agreed that the term sukura-maddava should really refer to wild boar meat itself.

There would have been no problem with Buddhist monks in ancient India eating meat. In those days, the monks subsisted on alms given to them each day and they were supposed to eat whatever that was given to them. Besides, according to the information given in the Pali Canon, the Buddha probably died in autumn or mid-winter (i.e. several months after his retreat during the rainy season) which would hardly be the growing season for mushroom. Thus, even the Venerable Sheng Yien ( 聖嚴法師), a prominent scholar who was ordained in the Mahāyāna tradition, acknowledged that the Buddha had died from taking meat of the wild boar ( Note 3).

What was wrong with the Buddha’s last meal

According to the Venerable Dr. Mettanando Bhikkhu, who was a physician before entering monkhood, the Buddha died of a condition called Acute Mesenteric Ischaemia ( Note 4). Under this condition, the blood supply to the intestine is compromised and causes the death of the tissue in a large section of the intestinal tract ( Note 5). He based his deduction on the fact that:

1. The Buddha had a similar incident of severe abdominal pain a few months before during a retreat at Vesali which nearly cost him his life. There can be episodes of recurrent Acute Mesenteric Ischaemia before a fatal incidence.
2. Acute Mesenteric Ischaemia is relatively common in old and frail people.
3. This diagnosis is consistent with the Buddha’s signs and symptoms as described in the Pali Canon with acute abdominal pain and dysentery ( interpreted as passage of bloody stool) followed by shock caused by blood loss.

Venerable Dr Mettanando Bhikkhu concludes that it is not the type of food which the Buddha has eaten, but rather, the meal itself. In other words, it is irrelevant what the Buddha has eaten, but the fact that he has eaten at all. His argument, however, is flawed on two accounts:

1. Acute Meseneric Ischaemia is generally triggered by a large meal. It is rather unlikely that the Buddha, who has always taught a middle path in everything, should have taken an unusually large meal that day.

  2. The Pāli Canon is very specific as to what the Buddha has eaten. He said to Cunda: “With the sukara-maddava you have prepared, Cunda, you may serve me; with the other food …..….. you may serve the community of bhikkhus”. Later, however, the Buddha said “Whatever, Cunda, is left over of the sukara-maddava, bury that in a pit. For I do not see in all this world……anyone who can eat it and entirely digest it except the Tathagata alone”( Note 6 & 7).It is apparent that the Buddha, who had just eaten the sukura-maddava, immediately detected something wrong with it and thus asked Cunda to bury it immediately.

The Buddha knew something was wrong with the sukura-maddava as soon as he had taken it. So, what can be wrong with it?

Food Poisoning as a cause of death for the Buddha

There are basically two common kinds of food poisoning. One kind is bacteria/virus contamination by the food handler during preparation or while serving the food. This type of poisoning takes a few hours to develop as the virus/bacteria need time to proliferate in the host’s body. The typical scenario is that the consumer ingests something in the evening and would not have symptoms until the middle of the night or the next morning. In addition, for someone to develop severe pain and bloody diarrhea like the Buddha, it would have to be some very virulent bacteria like Shigella, Salmonella, E. Coli ( especially the O157 strain), which would normally take over 16 hours for symptoms to appear. Thus, as the Buddha almost immediately sensed something wrong with the sukura-maddava, the description in the Pali Canon does not really point to this kind of food poisoning.

The other type of food poisoning is due to prior contamination of the food by food handlers such that bacteria have been deposited on the food and then given time to proliferate and produce toxins quite some time before the food is served. The most common form of this poisoning in modern days is by the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus which can produce a toxin that causes intense vomiting and abdominal pain. The onset of symptoms is almost immediate, as the toxin is already in the food itself. However, bloody stool is not a feature of this very common form of food poisoning.

Chen & Chen (2005) consider that the most likely explanation that would explain adequately the description in the Pāli Canon is that of food poisoning by the beta-toxins of the bacteria Clostridium perfringens type C infection. This bacteria is widely distributed in nature and may contaminate a variety of foods especially undercooked pork. There has been record of outbreaks in Northern Germany after the Second World War and where the disease was known as Darmbrand ( German for ‘fire bowels’. The poisoning is characterized by vomiting, abdominal pain and bloody diarrhea culminating in shock and death with a fatality rate approaching 60% in serious cases. In Papua New Guinea, where the term ‘pig-bel’ disease has been coined, outbreaks occur every 3-10 years when people consume large amount of pork in the ‘pig-kill’ festivals.

While Chen & Chen’s theory does seem to fit the description in the Pāli Canon of the immediate events leading to the death of the Buddha and link it to the sukura-maddava he consumed, it fails to adequately explain the associated event of a similar attack of abdominal pain that had occurred a few months earlier during the rainy-season retreat. This event was given a lot of importance in the Pali Canon as the pain was supposed to be very intense and almost killed the Buddha. It is very likely that this event is related to the subsequently fatal event. In this respect, the Venerable Dr. Mettanando Bhikkhu’s theory seems to be more consistent. Finally, the bacteria and toxins that were prevalent 2500 years ago may not be the same as those today, and we do not really have any bacteriological proof of any particular bacteria.

Conclusion
The historical Buddha must have been a frail old man at the age of 80 in ancient India at the time of his death. Any minor disease could have killed him. The description in the Pali Canon certainly points to some kind of severe acute condition of the bowel. Without forensic autopsy done at the time, we would never know whether it was due to food poisoning or arterial disease of the bowel.