Sayadaw

by Hla Min

Updated : June 2025

Usage

• Senior monk or the Chief resident monk of a monastery. Often used together with “U”. e.g Sayadaw U Sobhana
• A distinguished sayadaw may be referred to as Sayadawgyi as a sign of reverence.
• The terms “sayadaw” and “sayadawgyi” originally corresponded to the senior monks who taught the former Burmese kings. They may be influential teachers of the Buddhist Dhamma and also outstanding meditation practitioners. They usually are Abbots of monasteries or monastery networks with a large number of resident monks and a lay following.

Honorific Terms

• Several honorific terms exist for Buddhist monks, reflecting their achievements and number of Vassa spent.
• The given name is extended with Prefixes, Suffixes and Titles

Prefix

• Achan (used in Thailand)
• Ashin အသျှင်
• Baddhanta ဘဒ္ဒန္တ
• Bhikkhu ဘိက္ခူ
• Maha Thera မဟာထေရ
• Oo ဦး၊ ဥူး
• Sayadaw ဆရာတော်
• Sayadawgyi ဆရာတော်ကြီး
• Shin ရှင်
• Upazin ဥပဇင်း
• Uzin ဦးဇင်း
• U ဦး၊ ဥူး
• Thera ထေရ
• Venerable

Suffix

• [A]bhivamsa” အဘိဝံသ
  Pass “Set kyar thi ha Dhammacariya” examination before age 26
• Lankara လင်္ကာရ
  Pass Lankara dhamma exam as a novice
• Pa hta ma gyaw ပထမကျော်
  First in the “Pa hta Ma Pyan” examination
• Thi ro ma ni သိရောမဏိ
  Finished 9 “kyans” in a single year
• Wun tha ka ဝံသက
  First in the “Set kyar thi ha Dhammacariya” examination

Title

Some monks may highlight their accomplishments

• Dhammacariya ဓမ္မာစရိယ
  Dhamma lecturer
• Thamane Kyaw သာမဏေကျော်
  Stood first in the Lankara examination
• Pali Paragu ပါဠိပါရဂူ
  Completed the examination in Pali
• Agga Maha Pandita အဂ္ဂမဟာပဏ္ဍိတ
  Senior sage
• Tipitaka Dara တိပိဋကဓရ
  Completed Three Baskets — “Vinaya”, “Sutta”, and “Abhidhamma”
• Dwee Pitaka Dara ဒွိပိဋကဓရ
  Completed Two Baskets
• [informal] “Ta Pone Saung” တပုံဆောင်
  Completed One Basket
• [informal] “Hna Pone Khwair Saung” နှစ်ပုံခွဲဆောင်
  Completed “Vinaya”, “Sutta” and the first part of “Abhidhamma”

U Vicittasarahhivamsa

A monk may be addressed by

• his given Dhamma name
  e.g. U Vicittasara
• a qualified name,
  e.g. U Victtasarabhivamsa (with the suufix -abhivamsa)
• by the name of his monastery
  e.g. Mingun Sayadaw
• title
  e.g. Tipitakadara
• and the combination
  e.g. Tipitakadara Mingun Sayadaw U Vicittasarabhimvamsa

Venerable Mingun Sayadaw U Vicittasarabhivamsa, served as “Chief Respondent” at the Sixth Buddhist Council (1954 – 1956) in Yangon,

He earlier passed the Tipitaka Examination with Distinctions in all subjects.

The Guinness Book of World Records recognized his memory and the feat of reciting 8000+ pages of the Pali Canon.

Thus, he could be addressed in several ways “

• Mingun Sayadaw
  Reference to his home monastery at Mingun
• U Vicittasara
  Name given at the Ordination
• U Vicittasarabhivamsa
  Passed the Mandalay Setkya Thiha examination before age 26
• Sayadaw U Vicittasarabhivamsa
  Chief Resident Monk
• Mingun Sayadaw U Vicittasarabhivamsa
  Chief Resident Monk of a monastery in Mingun
• Tipitaka Sayadaw U Vicittasarabhivamsa
  Passed Tipitaka examination
• Tipitakadhara Dhammabhandakarika Sayadaw U Vicittasarabhivamsa
  First monk to be awarded the titles Tipitakadhara (“Bearer of the Tipitaka) and Dhammabhandakarika (“Treasurer of the Dhamma”).

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