Burmese Buddhist titles (သာသနာတော်ဆိုင်ရာ ဘွဲ့တံဆိပ်တော်များ) encompass numerous honorific titles conferred by the Burmese government, to recognize members of the

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 ...

as well as civilians. These religious titles are conferred annually by the Burmese government, in a special ceremony during the full moon day of Tabaung, at the

Uppatasanti Pagoda , native_name = , image = Naypyidaw -- Uppatasanti Pagoda.JPG , image_size = , alt = , caption = , map_type = Burma , map_size = , map_alt ...

Naypyidaw Naypyidaw, officially spelled Nay Pyi Taw (; ), is the capital and third-largest city of Myanmar. The city is located at the centre of the Naypyidaw Union Territory. It is unusual among Myanmar's cities, as it is an entirely planned city o ...

. From 1988 to 2008, the ceremony was held at the Mahāpāsaṇa Cave, near

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, Myanm ...

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 ...

History

In the pre-colonial era, the Burmese monarchy recognized Buddhist monks and laypersons by bestowing religious titles composed 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'' Buddh ...

and native Burmese styles. Sayadaw (ဆရာတော်), which literally means "teacher of royalty," was originally bestowed to monks who had educated the king as monastic teachers or tutors, although its usage grew more commonplace with time.

Pagan era

During the

Pagan Kingdom The Kingdom of Pagan ( my, ပုဂံခေတ်, , ; also known as the Pagan Dynasty and the Pagan Empire; also the Bagan Dynasty or Bagan Empire) was the first Burmese kingdom to unify the regions that would later constitute modern-da ...

, several kings awarded religious titles to prominent Buddhist monks.

Pinya and Innwa eras

Konbaung era

During the Konbaung Dynasty, distinguished monks received a suffixed title in the form of (ရာဇဂုရု) or (ရာဇာဓိရာဇဂုရု). The reign of Mindon Min also saw a liberalization in the usage of Sayadaw as a title, which became widely conferred to accomplished monks, regardless of whether they had personally educated the king. Nowadays, Sayadaw is routinely used as a title for all senior monks.

Colonial era

From 1915 to 1942, the British colonial government conferred the title (အဂ္ဂမဟာပဏ္ဍိတ) to 98 monks.

Post-independence era

In 1948, Burma achieved independence from Great Britain. From 1951 through 1953, the Burmese government awarded the title to 15 monks. From March to July 1953, the government convened a special committee to establish a new system of religious titles. The new system, which included titles for monks and civilians, was introduced on 28 July 1953: # Clerical religious titles ## ## (အဘိဓဇမဟာရဋ္ဌဂုရု) # Civilian religious titles ## Pyinna Kyaw (ပညာကျော်) ## (ပညာဗလ) ## (မဟာပညာဗလ) Following the

Sixth Buddhist council The Sixth Buddhist Council ( pi, छट्ठ सॅगायना (); my, ဆဋ္ဌမသင်္ဂါယနာ; si, ඡට්ඨ සංගායනා) was a general council of Theravada Buddhism, held in a specially built cave and p ...

and introduction of the Tipiṭakadhara examinations, a new series of titles recognizing academic merit, was introduced by the government.

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

, in 1953, became the first recipient of the newly minted (တိပိဋကဓရ ဓမ္မဘဏ္ဍာဂါရိက) title. During the socialist era from 1978 to 1988, the system of civilian titles was abolished altogether. The practice of conferring Buddhist titles to civilians was reinstated on 24 May 1991 by the

State Law and Order Restoration Council State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * '' State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our ...

, which added 20 new religious titles, including 3 scholarly titles, 4 domestic and international religious propagation titles, and 4 civilian titles for men, and 4 for women.

Modern-day system

On 17 June 2015, the

Office of the President of Myanmar The Office of the President of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar ( my, ပြည်ထောင်စုသမ္မတမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော် နိုင်ငံတော်သမ္မတရုံး) is a mini ...

issued a directive amending the existing system of Buddhist titles recognized by the government. The system is divided into 7 categories, outlined below: # Pariyatti titles ## (အဘိဓဇမဟာရဋ္ဌဂုရု) ## (အဂ္ဂမဟာပဏ္ဍိတ) # Tipiṭakadhara Dhammabhaṇḍāgārika (တိပိဋကဓရ ဓမ္မဘဏ္ဍာဂါရိက) # Academic instruction titles ## (အဂ္ဂမဟာဂန္ထဝါစကပဏ္ဍိတ) ## (မဟာဂန္ထဝါစကပဏ္ဍိတ) ## (ဂန္ထဝါစကပဏ္ဍိတ) # Dhammakatika titles ## (မဟာဓမ္မကထိက ဗဟုဇနဟိတဓရ) ## (ဓမ္မကထိက ဗဟုဇနဟိတဓရ) # Religious propagation titles ## ( pi, label=none, script=mymr, အဘိဓဇအဂ္ဂမဟာသဒ္ဓမ္မဇောတိက) ## ( pi, label=none, script=mymr, အဂ္ဂမဟာသဒ္ဓမ္မဇောတိကဓဇ) ## ( pi, label=none, script=mymr, မဟာသဒ္ဓမ္မဇောတိကဓဇ) ## ( pi, label=none, script=mymr, သဒ္ဓမ္မဇောတိကဓဇ) # Kammapaṭṭhana titles ## ( pi, label=none, script=mymr, အဂ္ဂမဟာကမ္မဋ္ဌာနာစရိယ) ## ( pi, label=none, script=mymr, မဟာကမ္မဋ္ဌာနာစရိယ) ## ( pi, label=none, script=mymr, ကမ္မဋ္ဌာနာစရိယ) # Sāsanānuggaha titles ## (အဂ္ဂမဟာသီရိသုဓမ္မမဏိဇောတဓရ) ## (အဂ္ဂမဟာသီရိသုဓမ္မသိင်္ဂီ) ## (သီရိသုဓမ္မမဏိဇောတဓရ) ## (သီရိသုဓမ္မသိင်္ဂီ) ## (သီဟသုဓမ္မမဏိဇောတဓရ) ## (သီဟသုဓမ္မသိင်္ဂီ) ## (သုဓမ္မမဏိဇောတဓရ) ## (သုဓမ္မသိင်္ဂီ)