Monastic Exams & Awards

by Hla Min

Updated : Sept 2025

Exams taken by most monks and/or novices

• Pathama Nge ပထမ ငယ် : Lower grade
• Pathama Latt ပထမ လတ် : Middle grade
• Pathama Gyi ပထမ ကြီး : Higher grade
• Dhammacariya ဓမ္မာ စရိယ : Dhamma teacher (e.g. Sasanadhaja Dhammacariya)

Awards & Titles

• Pathama Kyaw ပထမ ကျော် : First in the Pathama pyan examination
• Alankara အလင်္ကာရ : Completed the Lanakra examination as a novice
• Thamane Kyaw သာမဏေ ကျော် : First in the Lankara examination
• Abhivamsa အဘိဝံသ : Completed the Set Kyar Thiha Dhammacariya before the age of 26
• Wunthaka ဝံ သ က: First in the Dhammacariya examination
• Thiromani သိ ရော မ ဏိ : Passed all subjects for Dhammacariya in one stroke
• Pali Paragu ပါ ဠိ ပါ ရ ဂူ : Answered the Dhammacariya examination in Pali

Tipitaka Exams

Vinaya

• Vinaya (oral)
• Vinya (written)

Sutta

• Sutta (oral)
• Sutta (written)

Abhidhamma

• Abhidhamma Part I (oral)
• Abhidhamma Part I (written)
• Abhidhamma Part II (oral)
• Abhidhamma Part II (written)

Tipitaka Awards & Titles

• Tipitakadhara တိပိဋကဓရ Bearer of the Tipitaka (‘recitation or oral’)
• Tipitakadhara Tipitakakawida : တိပိဋကဓရ တိပိဋကကောဝိဓ Bearer of the Tipitaka (‘oral’ and written’)
• Tipitakadhara Dhammabhandagarika : တိပိဋကဓရ ဓမ္မ ဘဏ္ဍာ ကာရိက Keeper of the Dhamma Treasure