Burmese Buddhist titles

Burmese Buddhist titles (သာသနာတော်ဆိုင်ရာ ဘွဲ့တံဆိပ်တော်များ) encompass numerous honorific titles conferred by the Burmese government, to recognize members of the Sangha as well as civilians. These religious titles are conferred annually by the Burmese government, in a special ceremony during the full moon day of Tabaung, at the Uppatasanti Pagoda in Naypyidaw. From 1988 to 2008, the ceremony was held at the Mahāpāsaṇa Cave, near Kaba Aye Pagoda in Yangon.

In the pre-colonial era, the Burmese monarchy recognized Buddhist monks and laypersons by bestowing religious titles composed of Pali and native Burmese styles. Sayadaw (ဆရာတော်), which literally means "teacher of royalty," was originally bestowed to monks who had educated the king as monastic teachers or tutors, although its usage grew more commonplace with time.

During the Pagan Kingdom, several kings awarded religious titles to prominent Buddhist monks.

During the Konbaung Dynasty, distinguished monks received a suffixed title in the form of Rājaguru (ရာဇဂုရု) or Rājādhirājaguru (ရာဇာဓိရာဇဂုရု). The reign of Mindon Min also saw a liberalization in the usage of Sayadaw as a title, which became widely conferred to accomplished monks, regardless of whether they had personally educated the king. Nowadays, Sayadaw is routinely used as a title for all senior monks.

From 1915 to 1942, the British colonial government conferred the title Aggamahāpaṇḍita (အဂ္ဂမဟာပဏ္ဍိတ) to 98 monks.

In 1948, Burma achieved independence from Great Britain. From 1951 through 1953, the Burmese government awarded the Aggamahāpaṇḍita title to 15 monks. From March to July 1953, the government a convened a special committee to establish a new system of religious titles. The new system, which included titles for monks and civilians, was introduced on 28 July 1953:

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