Buddhist tradition puts the Buddha's death at Kushinagar in specific, almost clinical detail, down to the meal blamed for it.
The final meal and the final teaching
The Mahaparinibbana Sutta describes the Buddha, in his final days, accepting a meal from the blacksmith Cunda that included a dish later translated variously as pork or a type of mushroom or truffle, after which he fell seriously ill. Tradition is explicit that the Buddha instructed his followers not to blame Cunda, treating the meal as circumstance rather than fault. He is described teaching until close to the end, lying between two sal trees, and finally entering parinirvana, final release from the cycle of rebirth at death.
Splitting the relics eight ways
Following cremation by the Malla clan who ruled the area, tradition holds that the remaining bodily relics were divided into eight portions and claimed by rival kingdoms and clans who had gathered, some accounts say under threat of conflict, averted by a Brahmin who brokered the division. Stupas were then built over each portion across the region, seeding a relic-veneration practice that spread with Buddhism itself.
The reclining figure
The large reclining Buddha statue housed at Kushinagar's Mahaparinirvana Temple, depicting the moment of death rather than teaching or meditation, is one of relatively few major Buddhist images built specifically to represent this scene rather than the Buddha's life or enlightenment.