Monastic examinations comprise the annual

examination system A standardized test is a test that is administered and scored in a consistent, or "standard", manner. Standardized tests are designed in such a way that the questions and interpretations are consistent and are administered and scored in a predete ...

used in

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...

(Burma) to rank and qualify members of the Buddhist

sangha Sangha is a Sanskrit word used in many Indian languages, including Pali meaning "association", "assembly", "company" or "community"; Sangha is often used as a surname across these languages. It was historically used in a political context t ...

, or community of Buddhist monks. The institution of monastic examinations first began in 1648 during pre-colonial era, and the legacy continues today, with modern-day examinations largely conducted by the Ministry of Religious Affairs's Department of Religious Affairs.

History

The institution of monastic examinations date to the pre-colonial era. Burmese monarchs used these examinations to encourage the study of

Pali Pali () is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or ''Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of ''Theravāda'' Buddhism ...

, the liturgical language of

Theravada ''Theravāda'' () ( si, ථේරවාදය, my, ထေရဝါဒ, th, เถรวาท, km, ថេរវាទ, lo, ເຖຣະວາດ, pi, , ) is the most commonly accepted name of Buddhism's oldest existing school. The school' ...

Buddhism. Successful candidates were rewarded with royal recognition, titles and ranks, and monastic residences. The ''pathamabyan'' examinations began in 1648 during the rule of King

Thalun Thalun ( my, သာလွန်မင်း, ; 17 June 1584 – 27 August 1648) was the eighth king of Toungoo dynasty of Burma (Myanmar). During his 19-year reign, Thalun successfully rebuilt the war-torn country which had been under constant wa ...

of the

Taungoo Dynasty , conventional_long_name = Toungoo dynasty , common_name = Taungoo dynasty , era = , status = Empire , event_start = Independence from Ava , year_start ...

. King

Bodawpaya Bodawpaya ( my, ဘိုးတော်ဘုရား, ; th, ปดุง; 11 March 1745 – 5 June 1819) was the sixth king of the Konbaung dynasty of Burma. Born Maung Shwe Waing and later Badon Min, he was the fourth son of Alaungpaya, fo ...

of the

Konbaung Dynasty The Konbaung dynasty ( my, ကုန်းဘောင်ခေတ်, ), also known as Third Burmese Empire (တတိယမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်) and formerly known as the Alompra dynasty (အလောင်းဘ ...

standardized the existing set of examinations, and introduced new ones related to the

Vinaya The Vinaya (Pali & Sanskrit: विनय) is the division of the Buddhist canon ('' Tripitaka'') containing the rules and procedures that govern the Buddhist Sangha (community of like-minded ''sramanas''). Three parallel Vinaya traditions remai ...

. This system temporarily lapsed following the demise of the

in 1886, but was revived by the colonial Directorate of Public Instruction to encourage theological and secular education in Burmese monasteries. After a few years of resistance by the Burmese sangha, the first series of colonially-administered examinations was successfully launched in June 1895. They were held annually in

Mandalay Mandalay ( or ; ) is the second-largest city in Myanmar, after Yangon. Located on the east bank of the Irrawaddy River, 631km (392 miles) (Road Distance) north of Yangon, the city has a population of 1,225,553 (2014 census). Mandalay was fo ...

Rangoon Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government ...

, and

Moulmein Mawlamyine (also spelled Mawlamyaing; , ; th, เมาะลำเลิง ; mnw, မတ်မလီု, ), formerly Moulmein, is the fourth-largest city in Myanmar (Burma), ''World Gazetteer'' south east of Yangon and south of Thaton, at th ...

. Successful candidates were certified as ''pathamagyaw''.

Government examinations

Monastic examinations are divided into multiple grades, based on level of difficulty. Monks that pass each succeeding examination are eligible to sit for the next highest-level examination. Monastic exams are held during the Burmese month of

Nayon Nayon ( my, နယုန်; mnw, ဇှ်ေ) is the third month of the traditional Burmese calendar. Festivals and observances * Tipitaka Festival () -national Pariyatti Sasana examinations for Buddhist monks * Mahasamaya Day () - full moon of ...

. Examination content is drawn from Buddhist texts (e.g., Abhidhamma Pitaka,

, and Sutta Pitaka). Questions require candidates to replicate passages from memory, to analyze specific text, and to correct

grammar.

''Thamanegyaw'' examinations

Novice monks ( ''sāmaṇera''), who are under the age of 20 and by virtue of their age, have not yet received full ordination, are eligible to sit for ''thamanegyaw'' (သာမဏေကျော်) examinations, which are administered by the monasteries in which the novice monks reside, between the months of October and January. The overall examination has three grades, and test knowledge of Buddhist scriptures, the Vinaya, Pali grammar, and the

Jataka tales The Jātakas (meaning "Birth Story", "related to a birth") are a voluminous body of literature native to India which mainly concern the previous births of Gautama Buddha in both human and animal form. According to Peter Skilling, this genre is ...

. Memorization of over 5,000 pages of text is required to pass the written and oral components, and the annual pass rate is under 13%. Novice monks who pass the exam are awarded the monastic title "" (လင်္ကာရ), which is suffixed to the monk's

monastic name A religious name is a type of given name bestowed for a religious purposes, and which is generally used in such contexts. Christianity Catholic Church Baptismal name In baptism, Catholics are given a Christian name, which should not be "foreign ...

''Pathamabyan'' examinations

The ''Pahtamabyan'' (ပထမပြန်စာမေးပွဲ) examinations, the lowest-level series of examinations, comprise three exams, from lowest to highest difficulty: # Pathamange examination (ပထမငယ်စာမေးပွဲ) # Pathamalat examination (ပထမလတ်စာမေးပွဲ) # Pathamagyi examination (ပထမကြီးစာမေးပွဲ) Candidates who rank first on the Pathamagyi examination are known as ''pathamagyaw'' ().

''Dhammācariya'' examinations

Dhammācariya examinations (ဓမ္မာစရိယစာမေးပွဲ), the mid-level series of examinations. Candidates for these examinations are required to pass all three components of the Pathamabyan examinations. The examinations are held over the course of nine days, including six days covering the base texts, one day covering Burmese language texts, and two days for Pali language texts. Successful candidates are bestowed the monastic title of "" (

for "teacher of the

Dharma Dharma (; sa, धर्म, dharma, ; pi, dhamma, italic=yes) is a key concept with multiple meanings in Indian religions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and others. Although there is no direct single-word translation for '' ...

").

Tipiṭakadhara and Tipiṭakakovida examinations

The Tipiṭakadhara and Tipiṭakakovida examinations (တိပိဋကဓရ တိပိဋကကောဝိဒ ရွေးချယ်ရေးစာမေးပွဲ), held since 1948, are the highest-level examinations conducted by the Burmese government. These examinations, require candidates to demonstrate

rote memory Rote learning is a memorization technique based on repetition. The method rests on the premise that the recall of repeated material becomes faster the more one repeats it. Some of the alternatives to rote learning include meaningful learning, ...

and comprehension of the entire

Pāli Canon The Pāli Canon is the standard collection of scriptures in the Theravada Buddhist tradition, as preserved in the Pāli language. It is the most complete extant early Buddhist canon. It derives mainly from the Tamrashatiya school. During th ...

and its relevant commentaries, sub-commentaries, and treatises. The oral (Tipiṭakadhara) and written (Tipiṭakakovida) components are held annually in December, over the course of 33 days at the

Kaba Aye Pagoda Kaba Aye Pagoda ( my, ကမ္ဘာအေးစေတီ; ; also spelt Gaba Aye Pagoda; lit. World Peace Pagoda), formally Thiri Mingala Gaba Aye Zedidaw, ), is a Buddhist pagoda located on Kaba Aye Road, Mayangon Township, Yangon, Myanma ...

's Mahāpāsāṇa Cave in

Yangon Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government ...

. The breadth of the examinations requires candidates to recite over 2.4 million words with correct pronunciation and smooth flow, and transcribe over 200 texts from memory. The examinations also require candidates to display their mastery of "doctrinal understanding, textual discrimination, taxonomic grouping and comparative philosophy of Buddhist doctrine." The first candidate to pass the grueling examinations was

Mingun Sayadaw The Venerable Mingun Sayadaw U Vicittasārābhivaṃsa ( my, မင်းကွန်းဆရာတော် ဦးဝိစိတ္တသာရာဘိဝံသ, ; 1 November 1911 – 9 February 1993) was a Burmese Theravada Buddhist ...

in 1954. His error-free performance across 16,000 pages, was rewarded by the Burmese government with the title "" (). As of 2020, only 15 monks have passed both the oral and written components, who are recognized by the Burmese government as "Sāsana Azani" (from Pali , ). Successful candidates are bestowed ranking titles, flagstaffs, and white silken ''kanekgadan'' umbrellas (ကနက္ကဒဏ်ထီးဖြူတော်) depending on their relative performance.

Private examinations

Two monastic organizations in Burma also conduct annual Dhammacariya examinations, including the Sakyasīha Examination (သကျသီဟ) sponsored by Mandalay's Pariyatti Sasana Association, and the Cetiyaṅgaṇa Examination (စေတိယင်္ဂဏ ပရိယတ္တိ ဓမ္မာနုဂ္ဂဟ စာလျှောက်မေးပွဲ) sponsored by the Board of Trustees of

Shwedagon Pagoda The Shwedagon Pagoda (, ); mnw, ကျာ်ဒဂုၚ်; officially named ''Shwedagon Zedi Daw'' ( my, ရွှေတိဂုံစေတီတော်, , ) and also known as the Great Dagon Pagoda and the Golden Pagoda is a gilded stupa ...

. Monks who pass these examinations are bestowed a monastic title, -''bhivaṃsa'' (ဘိဝံသ, literally "noble lineage"), which is suffixed to their monastic name (e.g.,

Ashin Nandamalabhivamsa Ashin Nandamālābhivaṃsa ( my, အရှင် နန္ဒမာလာ ဘိဝံသ) (born 22 March 1939), commonly known by his position as Rector Sayadaw ( my, ပါမောက္ခချုပ် ဆရာတော်), is a Burmes ...

). These examinations, which test monks' knowledge of Buddhist scriptures and analytical thinking, are highly regarded by Buddhist laity in Myanmar, and consists of two stages, the first of which must be passed by the age of 27 and the second by the age of 35. Successful candidates of the latter examination are bestowed the Cetiyaṅgaṇa Pariyatti Dhammācariya Gaṇavācaka (စေတိယင်္ဂဏ ပရိယတ္တိ ဓမ္မာစရိယ ဂဏဝါစက) and Cetiyaṅgaṇa Abhivaṃsa (စေတိယင်္ဂဏ အဘိဝံသ) titles. Successful candidates are qualified to sit for the government's Tipitakadhara and Tipitakavida examinations.

Monastic titles

Candidates successfully passing the Dhammācariya and higher-level examinations are bestowed ranking titles, as listed below (in order of decreasing precedence): # and examination titles ## (ဓမ္မဘဏ္ဍာဂါရိက, "Keeper of the Dhamma Treasure") ## (မဟာတိပိဋကကောဝိဒ, "Great Bearer of the Tipitaka (oral and written)") ## (တိပိဋကကောဝိဒ, "Bearer of the Written Tipitaka") ### (အဘိဓမ္မကောဝိဒ) ## (တိပိဋကဓရ, "Bearer of the Spoken Tipitaka")) ### (အဘိဓမ္မိက) ## (ဒီဃနိကာယကောဝိဒ) ## (ဒီဃဘာဏက) ## (ဝိနယကောဝိဒ) ## (ဝိနယဓရ) # Dhammācariya examination titles ## (ဓမ္မာစရိယမကုဋရံသီ) ## (သာသနဓဇဓမ္မာစရိယအဘိဓမ္မပါဠိပါရဂူ), (သာသနဓဇဓမ္မာစရိယဒီဃနိကာယပါဠိပါရဂူ), and (သာသနဓဇဓမ္မာစရိယဝိနယပါဠိပါရဂူ) ## (သာသနဓဇ သိရီပဝရဓမ္မာစရိယ) ## (သာသနဓဇဓမ္မာစရိယ)