Buddhist sects in Myanmar

☆ Save On Wikipedia ↗

Buddhist sects in Myanmar are the sects of Buddhism that are based on and practised in Myanmar. Monastic orders of Theravāda Buddhism in Myanmar are officially called "sects".[1]: 60  However, they differ mainly in ordination lineage, monastic administration, and interpretations of Vinaya discipline rather than by major doctrinal differences; all are recognized as belonging to the Theravāda tradition and share the authority of the Pāḷi Canon. The nine recognized "Theravada Sangha sects" (monastic orders) constitutes "one and only Sangha organization" as explicitly stipulated by the Law Relating to Sangha Organization, 1990, but the law does not mention anything about the Mahāyāna Buddhism.[2] There have also been actual attempts to create new forms of Buddhism but such sects are deemed heretical and subsequently banned.[3][4][5]

Timeline of monastic sects of Theravada Buddhism in Myanmar (names are orthographically transliterated; non-Theravada sects are not included here)

Before the arrival of Theravāda Buddhism, Ari Buddhism was widespread in Pagan Kingdom.: 64  After 150 years has passed since the adoption of Theravāda Buddhism in Pagan, the first schism into four sects happened,[1]: 66  which was later ended by the purification effort of a Hanthawady king, according to the Kalyāṇi Sima stone inscriptions.[6] Throughout the Ava period and early Konbaung period, new schisms emerged between town-dwelling sect and forest-dwelling sect,: 67–69  and between one-shoulder covering sect and both-shoulder covering sect.[1]: 69–70  The defeat of the one-shoulder covering sect resulted in a unified order,[7] but new sects broke out again in the late Konbaung period and throughout the British rule. Currently, only nine sects are sanctioned by the law and creating new sects is prohibited, punishable with imprisonment.[2][4]

The word "Gaing", "Gaṇa" or "Sect"

Derived from the Pali word "Gaṇa", the Burmese word "ဂိုဏ်း" (ALA-LC: Guiṇʻʺ) "Gaing" can mean group, sect, or gang,[8] and also, occults and cults.[1]: 59–60  In the context of Saṃgha "Gaing", it is to be called "Sect" in English.[1]: 60  The word "Gana" is sometimes used in the state-owned English news outlets.[9][10]

The sects emerged from the first schism during the Pagan period were recorded to use the Pali term "Gaṇa" in their names.[11]: xii 

Historical schisms

Native vs Sri Lankan lineages

  • Purimagaṇa[11]: xii  / Purima Saṃghā Sect[1]: 67 
  • Pacchāgaṇa[11]: xii  / Pacchima Saṃghā Sect[1]: 67 
    lineage of disciples of Chapada who studied as novices and were ordained as full monks in Sri Lanka. Chapada Thera caused a schism in Burma upon his return, and his friends from Sri Lanka who came together with him caused further schism later:[11]: xii, 74 [1]: 66 
    • lineage of disciples of Sīvali[a]
    • lineage of disciples of Tāmalinda
    • lineage of disciples of Ānanda[b]

Town-dwelling vs Forest-dwelling

  • Gāmavāsī Bahucāra Festive Monastery Sect[1]: 68 
  • Araññavāsī Forest Monastery Sect[1]: 68 

Hat-wearing and Shoulder-covering Controversy

  • Pārupana Sect[12]: 45 [11]: xiii  / Ayon Sect[13]/ Ayondaw Sect[1]: 69 
  • Ekamsika Sect[12]: 45 [11]: xiii  / Atin Sect[13] / Ton Village Sect[1]: 69 
  • Gāmavāsī Hat-wearing Sect[1]: 69 

The nine sects of Sangha

Nine Sangha sects (monastic orders) had been registered with the Department of Religious Affairs by 1 February 1980.[14][15] The Law Relating to Sangha Organization, enacted by the SLORC junta in 1990, explicitly recognizes only these nine sects and prohibits the formation of new sects. However, the law allows the existing sects to merge.[2] The official list of the Nine Major Sects of Saṃghā (သံဃာဂိုဏ်းကြီးကိုးဂိုဏ်း) is as follows:[14][15][2][1]

  1. သုဓမ္မာဂိုဏ်း Sudhammā Sect
  2. ရွှေကျင်ဂိုဏ်း Shwegyin Sect
  3. ဓမ္မာနုဓမ္မ မဟာဒွါရနိကာယဂိုဏ်း Dhammānudhamma Mahādvāra Nikāya Sect
  4. ဓမ္မဝိနယာနုလောမ မူလဒွါရနိကာယဂိုဏ်း Dhammavinayānuloma Mūladvāra Nikāya Sect
  5. အနောက်ချောင်းဒွါရဂိုဏ်း Anaukchaung Dvāra Sect
  6. ဝေဠုဝန် နိကာယဂိုဏ်း Veḷuvanna Nikāya Sect
  7. စတုဘုမ္မိက မဟာသတိပဋ္ဌာန် ငှက်တွင်းဂိုဏ်း Catubhummika Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Hngettwin Sect
  8. ဂဏဝိမုတ် ကူးတို့ဂိုဏ်း Gaṇavimut Kudo Sect
  9. ဓမ္မယုတ္တိနိကာယ မဟာရင်ဂိုဏ်း Dhammayutti Nikāya Mahāyin Sect

Sudhammā Sect

Originally, sudhammā was not the name of a sect. Based on the tradition of Thagyamin (Sakka) judging crimes and legal cases at the Sudhammā resthouse in Tāvatiṃsā heaven, the meeting place of senior monks (Sayadaws) discussing and judging the crimes and legal cases relating to the Buddhist religion Sāsanā is called Sudhammā. Before the breakaway of other sects, all of the Sangha in Myanmar were under the administration of Suddhamā Council. Since the breakaway of the Shwegyin Sect, monks who are not members of the new sects are automatically regarded to belong to the Sudhammā Sect.[15]

Thathanabaing Sect vs Twelve Monks Sect

In 1257 M.E. (1894[16] C.E.), the dispute between the Sudhammā Council and the Thathanabaing election gave rise to the split into two sects: the "Thathanabaing Sect", those followed the Thathanabaing elected by laymen and monks outside of the Sudhammā Council, and the "Twelve Monks Sect", those who followed the twelve then-incumbent members of the Sudhammā Council.[17]: 103 

Shwegyin Sect

In the year 1214 M.E. (1852-1853 C.E.), Sudhammā Council summoned the Shwegyin Sayadaw U Jāgara before them. As he did not come, the Sudhammā prepared to bring him by force. Some Sudhammā Sayadaws who were friends of Shwegyin Sayadaw advised him to flee to Lower Burma (under British rule). When King Mindon heard that news, he issued the royal order of Ganavimut, prohibiting the Sudhammā Council from summoning the Shwegyin Sayadaw, stating that it no longer had the right to summon him and that he could live independently.[1]: 15  Since then, the lineage of Shwegyin Sayadaw is called the Shwegyin Sect.[15]

The three Dvāra sects

On a Uposatha day in 1214 M.E. (1852-1853 C.E.), Okpho Sayadaw U Uggaṃsa went to a monastery of local gaing-dauk (sect's assistant head) sayadaws. There, he saw them performing the rites at an udakukkhepa sīmā connected with a gāmakhetta with a bridge. He refused to join them in performing, saying that the rites had failed because of the connection of udakukkhepa sīmā with gāmakhetta. The gaing-dauk sayadaws argued against him.[1]: 22–23  A Vinaya dispute subsequently arose, resulting in the separation of a new sect,[18] but it did not receive the name Dvarā at that time.[1]: 23  The Okpho Sayadaw preached to his followers to replace the words kāyakamma, vacīkamma, manokamma in the Okāsa prayer with the words kāyadvāra, vacīdvāra, manodvāra. In 1217 ME, a dispute broke out among the Uposatha observers on whether the recitation with three dvāra or the one with three kamma was correct. When they asked the Okpho Sayadaw, he judged that the recitation with dvāra is the only correct way, citing the Aṅguttara Nikāya of the Pāli canon. Those who disagreed asked the Kyìthè Layhtat Sayadaw (author of the Jinattha-pakāsanī), who judged that they should recite with kamma, citing the verse "natvāti kāyakamma vacīkamma manokamma saṅkhātehi tīhikammehi namassitvā". Thus, the sect of Okpho Sayadaw was called "Dvāravādī Sect" while those who disagreed with him (i.e., Sudhammā followers) were called "Kammavādī Sect".[1]: 23–24  The Okpho Sayadaw was proficient in astrology. He said that the full moon days and new moon days in the Burmese calendar are one day earlier than the actual days. He and his follower monks performed rites on the first waning days and the first waxing days instead of full moon days and new moon days, until he passed away.[15]

Anaukchaung Dvāra Sect

Monks from six monasteries of the Dvāra Sect near the Ngawun River, locally known as Anaukchaung (Western Stream), accused the Ngathaingchaung Yetagun Monastery Sayadaw of the First Pārajika offense with a woman. Because the Dvāra Sect leader Okpho Sayadaw sided with the accused monk, the monks from those six monasteries broke away and founded a separate sect. This sect, Anaukchaung Dvāra Sect, is led by six sayadaws.[15]

Dhammānudhamma Mahādvāra Nikāya Sect

In the 13 years after the death of Okpho Sayadaw, no one had been elected as the new Mahānāyaka of Dvāra sāsanā. In 1280 M.E. (1918-1919 C.E.), the Dvāra Sect held a Sangha meeting which elected the Yangon Monastery Sayadaw from Hinthada as the second Mahānāyaka of Dvāra Sāsanā, and gave the title of "Dhammānudhamma Mahādvāra Nikāya" to their Dvāra Sect.[1]: 25  The majority of Dvāra monks reverted to performing rites on full moon days and new moon days in the Burmese calendar, citing a teaching of Lord Buddha that full moon days and new moon days be determined by the king or the government (rāja padhāna).[15]

Dhammavinayānuloma Mūladvāra Nikāya Sect

Ingapu Sayadaw and his followers had personal and doctrinal disputes with Dvāra Sayadaws from Hinthada. When the Hinthada monks held a Sangha meeting and took the name "Mahādvāra Nikaya", the Ingapu Sayadaw named his group "Mūladvāra" without holding a Sangha meeting. The Mūladvāra Nikāya retains the practice of performing the rites on the first waning days and the first waxing days, as taught by the Okpho Sayadaw.[1]: 29–30  The sect later took the title "Dhammavinayānuloma Mūladvāra Nikāya," meaning the original Dvāra sect which practices according to Dhamma and Vinaya.[15]

Annual monk population data

According to the rules and regulations of the Sangha Organization of Myanmar, every monastery belonging to each of the nine recognized monastic sects is required to submit annually the number of monks and novices residing there.[19]

Sect1377 M.E. (2016 C.E.)

Number of monks[20]

 1381 M.E. (2019 C.E.)

Number of monks[21]

 1382 M.E. (2020 C.E.)

Number of monks[22]

Sudhammā 467025 453415 465189
Shwegyin 50692 49729 46780
Mahādvāra 6066 5838 6147
Mūladvāra 3872 4341 4103
Anaukchaung 645 386 449
Veḷuvan 3732 3739 3758
Hngettwin 1445 1289 1356
Mahāyin 823 879 1049
Kudo 927 833 939
Total 535327 520449 529770

Unrecognized sects within the recognized sects

Other unrecognized sects of Sangha had to merge with the recognized sects because they had not registered by 2 February 1980, and had failed to send sect representatives to the meeting that year.[23]

Some sects, such as the Tai Zawti Sect, have merged into the Sudhammā Sect[24] but retain their characteristics.[23]

The Rāmañña Nikāya is a Mon-ethnic monastic order whose monks are currently de jure members of Shwegyin Sect, Mahāyin Sect and Sudhammā Sect.[25] Although it did not receive recognition in 1980, it has maintained the de facto structure of a nikāya monastic order since 1920. It has been requesting formal recognition from the government since the 2020s.[26]

Sects of Mahayana Buddhism

Mahāyāna Buddhism is also practised in modern Myanmar mostly by Chinese descendants,[27][28] but also by some minority ethnic groups.[29]

Banned sects

Some sects, which are deemed to be against the Theravāda Buddhism but unrelated to the Mahāyāna Buddhism, have been banned. The Sky Blue Sect (မိုးပြာဂိုဏ်း), with the title Paccuppan Kammavāda Buddhism (ပစ္စုပ္ပန်ကမ္မဝါဒဗုဒ္ဓဘာသာ), is among the banned sects.[3][5][4]

See also

Notes

  1. not to be confused with Indian Sīvali
  2. not to be confused with Indian Ānanda

References

  1. ဓမ္မဃောသကဦးမောင်မောင် (March 1989). နိုင်ငံတော်အသိအမှတ်ပြုသံဃာ့ဂိုဏ်းကြီးကိုးဂိုဏ်းအကြောင်း [About The State Recognized Nine Major Sects of Saṃghā] (in Burmese). Rangoon: စိန်ပန်းမြိုင်စာပေတိုက်. Retrieved 29 October 2025.
  2. သံဃာ့အဖွဲ့အစည်းဆိုင်ရာဥပဒေ [Law Relating To Sangha Organization] (in Burmese). State Law and Order Restoration Council. 31 October 1990. Retrieved 29 October 2025.
  3. "ပစ္စုပ္ပန်ကမ္မဝါဒဗုဒ္ဓဘာသာဂိုဏ်း တည်ထောင်သူ ရှင်ဉာဏ(ခ) ရှင်မိုးပြာ၏ ပြုမူဆောင်ရွက်မှုများနှင့်ပတ်သက်၍ နိုင်ငံတော်သံဃမဟာနာယကအဖွဲ့၏ သဘောထားကြေညာချက်ထုတ်ပြန်ခြင်း". Ministry of Religious Affairs and Culture (Myanmar) (in Burmese). 28 December 2016. Archived from the original on 5 February 2021.
  4. Yan Naing Linn (9 June 2025), "The Significance of Doctrinal Purity: Burmese Monastic Regulatory System (Vinicchaya Trial)", Journal of International Buddhist Studies, 16 (1), retrieved 22 June 2026
  5. Kawanami, Hiroko (20 October 2020), The Making of a Buddhist Heretic: The Case of Sky-Blue Sect (PDF), retrieved 22 June 2026
  6. Taw, Sein Ko (1892). The Kalyani Inscriptions Erected by King Dhammaceti at Pegu: Text and Translation (PDF). Rangoon: The Superintendent, Government Printing, Burma.
  7. Rowe, Mark Michael, ed. (2025-12-31), "2 The History of Macrolevel Monasticism in Myanmar", Living with the Vinaya, University of Hawaii Press, pp. 22–40, doi:10.1515/9780824899400-006, ISBN 978-0-8248-9940-0, retrieved 2025-05-10
  8. Myanmar-English Dictionary. Department of the Myanmar Language Commission. 1993.
  9. Myanmar News Agency (11 March 2024). "8th State Central Working Committee of the Sangha continues for third-day session". Yangon: The Global New Light of Myanmar. Retrieved 29 October 2025.
  10. Myanmar News Agency (10 June 2024). "SSMNC member Sayadaws offered national-level regalia vehicles". Yangon: The Global New Light of Myanmar. Retrieved 29 October 2025.
  11. Law, Bimala Churn (1952). The History of The Buddha's Religion (Sāsanavaṃsa). Sacred Books of the Buddhists. Vol. XVII. London: Luzac and Company, Ltd.
  12. Bode, Mahel Haynes (1 July 1898), A Burmese History Of Buddhism (PDF), retrieved 21 June 2026
  13. Ko Ko Naing (June 2010), Buddhism In The Late Konbaung Period (1819-1885) (PDF), retrieved 21 June 2026
  14. ပြည်ထောင်စုဆိုရှယ်လစ်သမ္မတမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော် သံဃာ့အဖွဲ့အစည်းအခြေခံစည်းမျဉ်း [Basic Rules of the Samgha Organization of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma] (in Burmese). Rangoon: Department of Religious Affairs. p. 49. Retrieved 29 October 2025.
  15. "သံဃာ့ဂိုဏ်းကြီး(၉)ဂိုဏ်း" [The Nine Major Sects of Monks]. Department of Religious Affairs (in Burmese). Retrieved 29 October 2025.
  16. ဘိုဘို (9 June 2023). "လက်ဝှေ့သတ်တဲ့ မြေရှင်၊ မင်းဆရာနဲ့ အမြောက်ရတဲ့ သာသနာပိုင်များ" [Thathanabaings who were Boxer, Landlord, King's Teacher and Artillery-Honour Recipient]. BBC. Retrieved 20 June 2026.
  17. မြန်မာ့စွယ်စုံကျမ်း [Burmese Encyclopedia] (in Burmese). Vol. 13. Rangoon: Burma Translation Society. 1973.
  18. Carbine, Jason A (2011). Sons of the Buddha: Continuities and Ruptures in a Burmese Monastic Tradition. Vol. 50. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-025409-9.
  19. Exec. Order No. 8 (August 3, 1980; in Burmese) State Samgha Maha Nayaka Committee. Retrieved on 29 October 2025.
  20. "The Account of Wazo Samgha of All Sect, M.E 1377 (2016)". State Saṃgha Mahā Nāyaka Committee. 2016. Archived from the original on 15 September 2017. Retrieved 2025-10-29.
  21. "၁၃၈၁-ခုနှစ် (၂၀၁၉) ခုနှစ် တိုင်းဒေသကြီး/ ပြည်နယ်အလိုက် ဝါဆိုသံဃာ ( ဂိုဏ်းစုံ ) စာရင်းချုပ်" [1381 Year (2019), Summary of Waso Sangha ( all Sects ) by Region/ State]. State Saṃgha Mahā Nāyaka Committee (in Burmese). 2019. Archived from the original on 24 June 2025. Retrieved 2025-10-29.
  22. Kyun Kyaung Catubhummika Maggaṅ Retreat (11 December 2020). "ဂိုဏ်းအလိုက်ဝါဆိုသံဃာတော်များအရေအတွက်စာရင်း" [List of the number of Waso monks in each sect]. Facebook (in Burmese). Retrieved 29 October 2025.
  23. "Hidden in Plain Sight: The Tai Zawti Buddhists of the Myanmar-China Border".
  24. Porter, Olivia (2023). Hidden in Plain Sight: The Tai Zawti Buddhists of the Myanmar-China Border (PDF) (PhD). King's College London.
  25. "ရာမညနိကာယဥက္ကဌ ဘဒ္ဒန္တ ဝဏ္ဏသာရအား မဟာချူလာလောင်ကွန်းတက္ကသိုလ်မှ ဂုဏ်ထူးဆောင်ပါရဂူ Ph.D ဘွဲ့ချီးမြှင့်၊ မွန်ဆရာတော် ၁၁ ပါးနှင့် အရပ်သား ၂ ဦးတို့ ဘွဲ့အသီးသီးရရှိ".
  26. "ရာမညနိကာယဂိုဏ်းအား တရားဝင်သံဃအဖွဲ့အစည်းအဖြစ် စွမ်းဆောင်ပေးနိုင်မည်ဆိုပါက နစကဥက္ကဌကို မွန်သံဃာထုတရပ်လုံးအနေဖြင့် အထူးတလည်ကျေးဇူးတင်ရှိနေမည်ဟုဆို". Independent Mon News Agency. May 24, 2022.
  27. Chiu, Tzu-Lung (31 October 2025), "From Marginalization to Localization: Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhism's Adaptive Strategies in Theravāda Myanmar", Religions, 16 (11), doi:10.3390/rel16111390, retrieved 2026-06-22
  28. Chiu, Tzu-Lung (18 July 2022). "When Mahāyāna Meets Theravāda: The Position of Chinese Bhikṣuṇīs in Contemporary Myanmar". Religions. 13 (7): 662. doi:10.3390/rel13070662. Retrieved 2026-06-22.
  29. Sayadaw, Dhamma Rakkhita. "မဟာယာနရဟန်းတော်ဘဝနှင့်ထေရဝါဒ (အပိုင်း၃)" [Life of The Mahayana Monk and Theravada (Part 3)] (Interview) (in Burmese). Interviewed by Sayadaw, Buddha Gonyi. Yangon: Buddha Gonyi Sayadaw. Retrieved 2026-06-22.