Tipitakadhara Tipitakakovida Selection Examinations

The Tipiṭakadhara Tipiṭakakovida Selection Examinations are the highest-level monastic examinations held annually in Burma since 1948, organized by the Ministry of Religious Affairs. It tests the candidates' memory of Tripiṭaka both in oral and in written components. The examinations require candidates to display their mastery of "doctrinal understanding, textual discrimination, taxonomic grouping and comparative philosophy of Buddhist doctrine." A Sayadaw who has passed all levels of the examinations is often referred as the Sutabuddha.

History

In order to held Sixth Buddhist council at Burma in the Buddhist era 2500, the other Theravada five countries asked Burma whether there was the Tripiṭaka reciter in Burma. Therefore, the Burmese government held the Tipiṭakadhara Tipiṭakakovida Selection Examinations since 1948. The examinations are so difficult that no one could pass until 1953. Mingun Sayadaw became the first winner of the exam in 1953, and was appointed the position of Chaṭṭhasaṅgatisajaka to answer the Dhamma questions asked by Mahasi Sayadaw.

Eligibility criteria

To take the examinations, the candidates must be only monks and novices who passed the examinations of Pathamagyi, Vinayavidu level, third level of Thamanaykyaw, or lecturer level of Cetiyangana and Sakyasiha.

Content

Recitation

The recitation content includes a cumulative 8026 pages of Tripiṭaka:

851 pages from the first two texts of the Vinaya Piṭaka
1409 pages from the second three texts of the Vinaya Piṭaka
779 pages from the three Dīgha Nikāya texts of the Sutta Piṭaka
1390 pages from the first five Abhidharma texts of the Abhidhamma Piṭaka
3597 pages from the second two Abhidhammā texts of the Abhidhamma Piṭaka.

Ideology written answer

All texts are taken at the oral-based examination plus its relevant commentaries, sub-commentaries, and treatises.

Procedures

The whole examinations process takes 33 days in total – from last week of December to the third week of January – at the Kaba Aye Pagoda's Mahāpāsāṇa Cave in Yangon.
At the reciting part, candidates have to take a text for three days, and four times in the morning, and five times in the afternoon each day. They will be prompted only five times in the whole day.
Those who passed the exam without being prompted are marked as "visiṭṭha".

Titles offered

Sayadaws who have passed five levels of ideology writing are awarded the degree of "Tipiṭakakovida", and the degree of "Tipiṭakadhara Tipiṭakakovida" is awarded to those who have passed all levels of the examination. Five years after receiving Tipiṭakadhara Tipiṭakakovida Degree, the Government of Myanmar offers him the title of Tipiṭakadhara Dhammabhanḍāgārika.

Reciting

If one passes on one Piṭaka, a white Kanakkadan umbrella with red handle.
If one passes on two Piṭakas, two white Kanakkadan umbrellas with red handles.
If one passes on three Piṭakas, three white Kanakkadan umbrellas with red handles.

They are offered Sāsanā flags bearing the above emblems.

Ideology written answer

If one passes one Piṭaka, a white Kanakkadan umbrella with a yellow handle.
If one passes two Piṭaka, two white Kanakkadan umbrellas with a yellow handle, Sāsanā flag bearing above emblems, degree-certificate, water-land travel upper-class free ticket, rice for every month, and Navakamma-Vatthu money are offered monthly.
If one passes three Tipiṭaka, three white Kanakkadan umbrellas with yellow handle. Sāsanā flag bearing above emblem, Tipiṭakadhara Tipiṭakakovidha pass-certificate, and water-land travel upper-class free ticket, monthly rice for alms-food and nāvakamma-vatthu are offered.

Recipients

The late Venerable Mingun Sayadaw is the first title-winner of the Tipiṭakadhara exam in Burma. As of 2020, only 15 monks have passed both the oral and written components, who are recognized by the Burmese government as "Sāsana Azani".
The awarded 16 Tipiṭakadhara Tipiṭakakovida, Tipiṭakadhara Dhammabhanḍāgārika Sayadaws are as follows.

No.	Dharma name	Common title	Name in Burmese	Pass year	Location of study
1	Bhaddanta Vicittasārābhivaṃsa	Mingun Sayadaw	ဘဒ္ဒန္တ ဝိစိတ္တသာရာဘိဝံသ	1953	Dhammanāda monastery, Mingun
2	Bhaddanta Neminda	Pakkhoku Sayadaw	ဘဒ္ဒန္တ နေမိန္ဒ	1959	Mahāvisutārāma monastery, Mawlamyine
3	Bhaddanta Kosalla	Pyay Sayadaw	ဘဒ္ဒန္တ ကောသလ္လ	1963	Pañcanikāya monastery, Yankin
4	Bhaddanta Sumaṅgalālaṅkāra	Gandarum Sayadaw	ဘဒ္ဒန္တ သုမင်္ဂလာလင်္ကာရ	1973	Mahāgadhāruṃ monastery, Mayangon
5	Bhaddanta Sīrindābhivaṃsa	Yaw Sayadaw	ဘဒ္ဒန္တ သီရိန္ဒာဘိဝံသ	1984	Mahāvisuddhāruṃ monastery, Bahan
6	Bhaddanta Vāyāmindābhivaṃsa	Yayzagyo Sayadaw	ဘဒ္ဒန္တ ဝါယာမိန္ဒာဘိဝံသ	1995	Tipiṭaka monastery, Dagon
7	Bhaddanta Sīlakkhandhābhivaṃsa	Mawgyun Sayadaw	ဘဒ္ဒန္တ သီလက္ခန္ဒာဘိဝံသ	1999	Tipiṭakanikāya monastery
8	Bhaddanta Vaṃsapālālaṅkāra	Myinmu Sayadaw	ဘဒ္ဒန္တ ဝံသပါလာလင်္ကာရ	1999	Tipiṭakanikāya monastery, Mingun
9	Bhaddanta Gandhamālālaṅkāra	Myingyan Sayadaw	ဘဒ္ဒန္တ ဂန္ဓမာလာလင်္ကာရ	2000	Dhammanāda monastery, Mingun
10	Bhaddanta Sunada	Tipiṭakadhara Sunlun Sayadaw	ဘဒ္ဒန္တ သုနန္ဒ	2004	Sulun Vipassanā monastery, Thingangyun
11	Bhaddanta Indapāla	Rammawadi Sayadaw	ဘဒ္ဒန္တ ဣန္ဒပါလ	2004	Tipiṭaka monastery, Dagon
12	Bhaddanta Abhijātābhivaṃsa	Sagaing Tipitaka Sayadaw	ဘဒ္ဒန္တ အဘိဇာတာဘိဝံသ	2010	Mahāsubodāruṃ monastery, Sagaing
13	Bhaddanta Indācariya	Butalin Sayadaw	ဘဒ္ဒန္တ ဣန္ဒာစရိယ	2012	Tipiṭakanikāya monastery, Mingun
14	Bhaddanta Vīriyānanda	Kanbawza Sayadaw	ဘဒ္ဒန္တ ဝီရိယာနန္ဒ	2017	Tipiṭakanikāya monastery, Dagon
15	Bhaddanta Paññāvaṃsābhivaṃsa	Kyaukpadaung Sayadaw	ဘဒ္ဒန္တ ပညာဝံသာဘိဝံသ	2020	Mahagandawinnikaya monastery, Dagon Myothit (East)
16	Bhaddanta Paññāsirīlaṅkāra		ဘဒ္ဒန္တ ပညာသိရီလင်္ကာရ	2024	Tipiṭakanikāya monastery, Dagon
17	Bhaddanta Seṭṭhañāṇālaṅkāra	Ye-oo Sayadaw	ဘဒ္ဒန္တ ‌သေဋ္ဌဉာဏာလင်္ကာရ	2025	Mahagandawinnikaya monastery, Dagon Myothit (East)