Author: Hla Min (Lifelong Learner)

by Hla Min

Updated : September 2026

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”).

by Hla Min

Updated : September 2026

Sixth Buddhist Council

• မန္တလေး မစိုးရိမ် ဆရာတော် — ဥက္ကဌ
• ရန်ကုန် ဗားကရာတရာတော် — အတွင်းရေးမှူး
• မန္တလေး ဝိဇ္ဇာလင်္ကာရဆရာတော် — တွဲဖက်အတွင်းရေးမှူး
• ရန်ကုန် သာသနာ့ရိပ်သာ မဟာစည်ဆရာတော် — အမေး
• မင်းကွန်းဆရာတော် — အဖြေ

Maha Thera Ledi Sayadaw U Nyana Daza

• Prolific writer, an outstanding lecturer, and a teacher of teachers
• Lay people in Burma were not known to teach Vipassana meditation
• The Ledi tradition has a lineage of Vipassa teachers who are not ordained monks:
  Sayagyi U Thet,
  Sayagyi U Ba Khin,
  Sayagyi S. N. t

Mingun Jetawun Sayadaw U Narada (1868 – 1955)

• Credited as one of the major revivers of Vipassana meditation
• Went to one Mingun Sayadaw, who presumably had studied meditation under Thee Gon Sayadaw, and asked for guidance.
  Was told to study Sattipattha (from the Scriptures) deeply and then practice meditation
• Prominent disciples : Mahasi Sayadaw and Taung Pulu Sayadaw

Sayadaw U Thittila (1896-1997)

• Did missionary work in UK
• Came back to Burma and taught at the Pali Department for several years before continuing his missionary work abroad
• Lectured in 25+ countries (including US, UK, France)

• Ovadacariya to Sanagha Maya Nayaka, trustees of renowned pagodas
• Outstanding teacher and writer
• Played an important role in reviving Buddhism in India and propagating the study of Abhidhamma
• Very modest; rarely talked about his many achievements
• Patamagyaw scholar of all Burma (1918) : selected from among 5000 candidates
• Panyattisasanahita (1923) : among the 4 out of 150 entrants who passed the toughest monastic examination
• Studied Sanskrit in India; English in India and England
• Translated Vibhanga (second of the seven Adbhidhamma texts) from Pali to English : published by the Pali Text Society in 1969 under the title of The Book of Analysis

Mahagandaryone Sayadaw Ashin Janakabhivamsa

• Wrote several books in Pali and Burmese
• Several of his students including Thamane Kyaw Sayadaw and U Hla Myint are teaching “Pali Sikkha (Training)” to lay persons without overwhelming with Pali Grammar

Mahasi Sayadaw U Sobhana

• Renowned Meditation Master and author
• Served as Questioner at the Sixth Buddhist Council held at Kaba Aye, Rangoon, Burma
• Chief Resident Monk of Mahasi Sasana Yeiktha
• Mentees : Sayadaws U Pandita, U Kundala, U Janabhivamsa and many meditation teachers

Panditarama Sayadaw U Pandita

• Senior disciple of Mahasi Sayadawgyi
• Renowned Meditation Master and author
• Succeeded Mahasi Sayadaw U Sobhana at Sasana Yeiktha
• Established Panditarama

Saddhamaransi Sayadaw U Kundala

• Senior disciple of Mahasi Sayadawgyi
• Outstanding meditation teacher
• Made Dhamma Duta missions abroad (until his health forced him to stop going on long, tedious trips).
• His biography (which covers to the age of 85) and his works can be found in http://www.saddhamaransi.org/

Chanmyay Sayadaw Ashin Janakabhivamsa

• Practiced vipassana meditation with the instruction of Mahasi Sayadawgyi in 1953-54
• Served as Palipatiwisodhaka (editor of Pali scriptures) at the Sixth Buddhist Council.
• Meditation teacher at the Sasana Yeiktha from 1967 – 1977.
• Member of Mahasi Sayadaw’s Dhamma Dhuta Mission to Europe and US in 1978 – 80
• Established the Chanmyay Yeiktha Buddhist Meditation Center in Myanmar
  chanmyay.org
  Branches in several countries (e.g. US, Singapore, Australia)

Mingun Tipitaka Sayadaw Ashin Vicittathara

• The Guinness Book of World Records listed Sayadaw as having an outstanding memory — the best at that time [in 1954].
• Served as the Chief Reciter (a la Ashin Upali and Ashin Ananda at the First Buddhist Council) at the Sixth Buddhist Council held at KabaAye (World Peace) Pagoda in Rangoon, Burma from 1954 – 1956.
• Could memorize, recall, and give exposition on 8027 pages of the Buddhist Scriptures known as Tipitaka [“Three Baskets”] :
  Vinaya – Rules of monastic conduct
  Sutta – Buddha’s discourses
  Abhidhamma – Ultimate reality)

Mogok Sayadaw U Vimala (1899 – 1962)

• Renowned Vipassana meditation master
• 500 (or more) audio tapes of Sayadaw’s recordings have been transcribed into books (some e-books), and CDs
  Available at the Mogok Vipassana Meditation Centers
• Featured in “Yahanda Hnit Poke Ko Htoo Myar” book by Dhammacariya U Htay Hlaing

Dhammananda Sayadaw U Silanandabhivamsa

• External examiner for the Pali Department
• Rector of ITBMU
• Chief Resident Monk of Dhammananda Vihara
• Spiritual Advisor of several monasteries and meditation centers
• Wrote books in Pali, Burmese and English
• Served as Chief Compiler of the Tipitaka Pali-Myanmar Dictionary for the Sixth Buddhist Council.

In April of 1979, Mahasi Sayadawgi made a Dhamma Duta mission to the US. At the request of the devotees, Sayadawgyi agreed to leave behind Sayadaw U Silanandabhivamsa and Sayadaw U Kelasa as “trail blazers” for the promulgation, preservation, and the promotion of Sasana.

There were no Burmese Buddhist monasteries and/or temples, but the Sayadaws were determined to sacrifice their blissful lives back in their homeland to do whatever they can to do the Sasana work.