“Then go and announce our coming,” said the elder.

“And if she asks why I have come, tell her that I shall stay in the village for one day, and ask her to prepare my birth chamber and provide lodgings for five hundred bhikkhus.”

Uparevata went to his grand-aunt and said: “Grand-aunt, my uncle has come.”

“Where is he now?” she asked. “At the village gate.”

“Is he alone, or has someone else come with him?”

“He has come with five hundred bhikkhus.”

And when she asked him, “Why has he come?” he gave her the message the elder had entrusted to him. Then she thought: “Why does he ask me to provide lodgings for so many? After becoming a monk in his youth, does he want to be a layman again in his old age?” But she arranged the birth chamber for the elder and lodgings for the bhikkhus, had torches lit, and then sent for the elder.

Sāriputta, accompanied by the bhikkhus, then went up to the terrace of the house and entered his birth chamber. After sitting down, he asked the bhikkhus to go to their quarters. They had hardly left when a grave illness, dysentery, fell upon the elder, and he felt severe pains. When one pail was brought in, another was carried out. The brahmin woman thought: ‘The news of my son is not good,’ and she stood leaning by the door of her own room.

And then it happened, the text tells us, that the Four Great Divine Kings asked themselves: “Where may he now be dwelling, the Marshal of the Dhamma?” And they perceived that he was at Nālaka, in his birth chamber, lying on the bed of his final passing away. “Let us go for a last sight of him,” they said.

When they reached the birth chamber, they saluted the elder and remained standing.

“Who are you?” asked the elder.

“We are the Great Divine Kings, venerable sir.”

 “Why have you come?”

“We want to attend on you during your illness.”

“Let it be!” said Sāriputta.

“There is an attendant here. You may go.”

When they had left, there came in the same manner Sakka, the king of the devas, and after him, Mahābrahmā, and all of them the elder dismissed in the same way.

The brahmin woman, seeing the coming and going of these deities, asked herself: “Who could they have been paid homage to my son and then left?”

And she went to the door of the elder’s room and asked the Venerable Cunda for news about the elder’s condition. Cunda conveyed the inquiry to the elder, telling him: “The great upāsikā (lay devotee) has come.”

Sāriputta asked her: “Why have you come at this unusual hour?”

“To see you, dear,” she replied. “Tell me, who were those who came first?”

 “The Four Great Divine Kings, upāsikā.”

“Are you, then, greater than they?” she asked.

“They are like temple attendants,” said the elder.

“Ever since our Master took rebirth, they have stood guard over him with swords in hand.”

“After they had left, who was it that came then, dear?”

“It was Sakka, the king of the devas.”

“Are you, then, greater than the king of the devas, dear?”

“He is like a novice who carries a bhikkhu’s belongings,” answered Sāriputta. “When our Master returned from the heaven of the Thirty- three, Sakka took his bowl and robe and descended to earth together with him.”

“And when Sakka had gone, who was it that came after him, filling the room with his radiance?”

“Upāsikā, that was your own lord and master, Mahābrahmā.” “Then are you greater, my son, even than my lord, Mahābrahmā?”

“Yes, upāsikā. On the day when our master was born, it is said that four Mahābrahmās received the Great Being in a golden net.”

Upon hearing this, the brahmin woman thought: “If my son’s power is such as this, what must be the majestic power of my son’s master and lord?”

And while she was thinking this, suddenly rapture and joy arose in her, suffusing her entire body.

The elder thought: ‘Rapture and joy have arisen in my mother. Now is the time to preach the Dhamma to her.’ And he said: “What was it you were thinking about, upāsikā?”

“I was thinking,” she replied, “if my son has such virtue, what must be the virtue of his master?”

Sāriputta answered:

“At the moment of my master’s birth, at his great renunciation of worldly life, on his attaining Enlightenment, and at his first turning of the Dhamma Wheel—on all these occasions the ten-thousandfold world-system quaked and shook. None is there who equals him in virtue, in concentration, in wisdom, in deliverance, and in the knowledge and vision of deliverance.”

And he then explained to her in detail the words of homage: “Such indeed is that Blessed One… (Iti pi so Bhagavā…).” And thus, he gave her an exposition of the Dhamma, basing it on the virtues of the Buddha.

When the Dhamma talk given by her beloved son had come to an end, the brahmin woman was firmly established in the fruit of stream- entry, and she said:

 “Oh, my dear Upatissa, why did you act like that? Why, during all these years, did you not bestow on me this ambrosial knowledge of the Deathless?”

 The elder thought: ‘Now I have given my mother, the brahmin woman Rūpasārī, the nursing-fee for bringing me up. This should suffice.’ And he dismissed her with the words: “You may go now, upāsikā.”

When she was gone, he asked: “What is the time now, Cunda?” “Venerable sir, it is early dawn.”

And the elder said: “Let the community of bhikkhus assemble.”

When the bhikkhus had assembled, he said to Cunda: “Lift me up to a sitting position, Cunda.” And Cunda did so.

Then the elder spoke to the bhikkhus, saying: “For forty-four years I have lived and travelled with you, my bhikkhus. If any deed or word of mine was unpleasant to you, forgive me, bhikkhus.”

And they replied: “Venerable sir, you have never given us the least displeasure, although we have followed you inseparably like your shadow. But may you, venerable sir, grant forgiveness to us.”

After that the elder gathered his large robe around him, covered his face, and lay down on his right side. Then, just as the Master was to do at his own Parinibbāna, he entered into the nine successive attainments of meditation, in forward and reverse order, & beginning again with the first absorption he led his meditation up to the fourth absorption. And at the moment after he had entered it, just as the crest of the rising sun appeared over the horizon, he utterly passed away into the Nibbāna-element without residue.

And it was the full-moon day of the month Kattika, which by the solar calendar corresponds to October/November.

The brahmin lady in her room thought: “How is my son? He does not say anything.” She rose, and going into the elder’s room she massaged his legs. Then, seeing that he had passed away, she fell at his feet, loudly lamenting; “O my dear son! Before this, we did not know of your virtue. Because of that, we did not gain the good fortune to have offered hospitality and alms to hundreds of bhikkhus! We did not gain the good fortune to have built many monasteries!” And she lamented thus up to sunrise.

As soon as the sun was up, she sent for goldsmiths and had the treasure room opened and had the pots full of gold weighed on a large scale. Then she gave the gold to the goldsmiths with the order to prepare funeral ornaments. Columns and arches were erected, and in the centre of the village the upāsikā had a pavilion of heartwood built. In the middle of the pavilion a large, gabled structure was raised, surrounded by a parapet of golden arches and columns. Then they began the sacred ceremony, in which human beings and deities mingled.

After the great assembly of people had celebrated the sacred rites for a full week, they made a pyre with many kinds of fragrant wood. They placed the body of the Venerable Sāriputta on the pyre and kindled the wood with bundles of fragrant roots. Throughout the night of the cremation the concourse listened to sermons on the Dhamma. After that the flames of the pyre were extinguished by the Elder Anuruddha with scented water. The Elder Cunda gathered together the relics and placed them in a filter cloth.

Then the Elder Cunda thought:

“I cannot delay here any longer. I must tell the Fully Enlightened One of the final passing away of my elder brother, the Venerable Sāriputta, the Marshal of the Dhamma.”

So he took the filter cloth with the relics, and Sāriputta’s bowl and robes, and went to Sāvatthī, spending only one night at each stage of the journey.

These are the events related in the commentary to the Cunda Sutta of the Satipaṭṭhāna Saṃyutta, with additions from the parallel version in the commentary to the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta. The narrative is taken up in the Cunda Sutta.