Pali Examinations: Multiple Perceptions and Divergent Purposes

Pali examinations on pariyatti, that is, knowledge of the Buddhist textual tradition, became one of the most prominent and enduring aspects of the revival of Buddhism at the turn of the twentieth century. They were a key feature of public Buddhist practice under the monarchy and became a major mode of response to colonialism in Burma. Beginning in the 1890s, Buddhists flocked to the cause of sponsoring Pali examinations, creating a movement of dozens of small lay-run associations offering exams on Pali texts for monks, nuns, and laypeople. Formal, centralized Pali examinations for the sangha were founded in the seventeenth century and have formed a key Buddhist ritual in Burma since, with virtuoso examination performances elevating monks to honors and fame.

In the twenty-first century, successfully passing certain Pali examinations has become an essential qualification in the career of monks: establishing both status and seriousness, but also the right to preach publicly and hold leadership positions. Three of the examinations founded in the colonial period—the government's Patamabyan examination, the Zediyingana association's examination, and the Pariyatti Thathanahita association's examination—form the most influential legacy of colonial Buddhist reforms; they have become central Buddhist institutions up to the present day and continue to set the standard for monastic achievement (Mandalay Pariyatti Thathanahita 1998; Union Buddha Sasana Council 1954). The Patamabyan examinations were founded by the Burmese crown and revived by the colonial government, and continue to the present as government-administered monastic examinations. The other two hold equal, if not greater, weight and authority to establish monastic credentials in the present, but are relatively recent inventions, created by independent bodies of laypeople in the colonial period. All of these have their roots in a contradictory politics of response to colonialism starting in the 1890s. Understanding the interactions between the multiple constituencies that came to forge the examinations as key Buddhist institutions can give us insight into the ways in which Buddhist projects mediated colonial modernity.

Pali Patamabyan examinations were an annual ritual under the Burmese monarchy, and the reorganization of these exams and their curriculum had been a key technique of sāsana reform since the late eighteenth century (Dhammasami Reference Dhammasami2004, 78–89; Pranke Reference Pranke2004, 30). Royal sponsorship of Pali exams became central to the mandate that those with political power should serve as patrons to the sāsana. When the British defeated King Thibaw in 1885, they were keen to dispel rumors that their presence would bring about a decline in Buddhism. They issued a statement of religious neutrality, claiming that they would not pose a threat to the future of Buddhism in Burma. The Taungdaw Thathanabaing met with the British commander immediately after annexation to appeal for continued government patronage, especially for the Pali Patamabyan examinations (Hall Reference Hall and Coupland1960, 145; Smith Reference Smith1965, 46). Although later histories and colonial administrators would depict the position of Thathanabaing as a universal “archbishop” of Buddhism in Burma, the position had been much more limited and varied in royal times. The creation of a Thathanabaing as the administrative head of the Buddhist sangha was the result of what Alexey Kirichenko (Reference Kirichenko and Borchert2018) has dubbed “the Thathanabaing project”—a collaboration between colonial officials and lay and monastic actors to redefine religious authority that was still in its earliest days. Despite the opportunity to reassure the population of the future of Buddhism, the colonial government initially refused to sponsor exams or offer recognition, wary that it would constitute state patronage of religion, conflicting with its policy of noninterference in religious affairs put in place after the 1857 mutiny in India (Metcalf and Metcalf Reference Metcalf and Metcalf2006, 104–5).

Over the next five years, two factors led some factions in the colonial administration to reconsider this policy. First, the British fought a bloody “pacification” campaign against Burmese insurgents who, many in the government believed, were rallied by monks. Thus, some argued, they should seek to garner support from mainstream monks as a counterweight. Support for the Taungdaw Thathanabaing appeared to be an opportunity to quell support for insurgents, and negotiations on reinstating the Pali examinations as he had at initially requested seemed like a smart opening move. Second, the creation of an education system for Burma rested on a plan to transform the teaching in monasteries into primary schools under loose government control (Turner Reference Turner, Dressler and Mandair2011; Reference Turner2014, chap. 4). The monks in newly acquired Upper Burma were proving particularly resistant to teaching the government's secular curriculum. The Director of Public Instruction, John Van Sommeran Pope, felt that demonstrating a serious interest in monastic subjects might generate sympathy among monastic teachers and make the scheme more successful.

In March 1891, Pope advocated reviving the Pali Patamabyan examinations with the sponsorship of the colonial state. The Chief Commissioner for Burma appointed a committee to propose a scheme for these examinations, with the express instruction, “to consult any persons whose opinions were likely to be of special value, such as the Right Reverend Bishop Bigandet, the Kinwun Mingyi, the Taungdaw Thathanabaing, and the more influential of the Sayadaw and pongyis in Upper and Lower Burma” (Myanmar National Archives 1892). In May 1892, the committee submitted its proposal, which in its material outlines was virtually identical to the last examinations held under the Burmese monarchy. In October of that year, the Chief Commissioner approved the plan, appointing Pope, three district and judicial commissioners, as well as the Taungdaw Thathanabaing and the Pakhan Sayadaw as the officiating committee for new Patamabyan examinations. Things appeared to be set for the first examinations in May 1893.

The plan, as proposed in 1892, included a set of written examinations at three levels, the same as those under the monarchy that were open to monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen. The examinations covered sections of Kaccayana's grammar, Abhidhamma texts, and the famous Abhidhammattha Sangaha compendium, requiring a written recounting of a portion of each text and a translation into Burmese. The curriculum and the format were almost identical to those held under the monarchy, with the exception that the government's plan had no provision for examinations on the Vinaya, the texts containing the rules for monks and nuns (Paṭhama Cā Tō Bran Upadhe 1883).Footnote ² The group that designed these exams felt that Vinaya examinations had been a tool of sectarian orthodoxy to limit patronage to an elite group of monks. They argued that excluding Vinaya examinations would distance the scheme from any attempt to determine monastic orthodoxy and sectarian partiality. Those candidates who were successful at each level of the new government Patamabyan examinations would be given a grant in rupees as well as a set of robes and a certificate. The system allowed for a subsequent oral recitation examination by the monastic authorities, but the oral exams were optional and not sponsored by the government.

However, the months between Pope's first suggestion in March 1891 and the plan's approval in October 1892 had seen a major conflict between Pope and monastic officials in Mandalay over the government education program (RPI 1891–92, Report on Upper Burma, 24). The Taungdaw Thathanabaing supported a movement led by the Pakhan Sayadaw to ban any involvement of government education officers in monasteries, claiming that monks could only legally teach religious subjects and could not participate in the government's secular curriculum (Minekhine Sayadaw [1913] 1929). Pope wrote bitterly about the bigotry and small-mindedness of this Mandalay “faction” of monks in his annual education report in 1892. The rift over education posed an impediment to the scheme for Pali examinations for both sides. For Pope, the Pali examinations were a gesture of goodwill meant to incentivize monastic participation in education. For the Taungdaw Thathanabaing, any participation with the government would be seen to be collusion, deeply opposed by the influential Pakhan Sayadaw and others in opposition to government education in monasteries.

Pope presented the plan created by the committee for the Patamabyan examinations to the Taungdaw Thathanabaing in 1892, which he portrayed as “an act of courtesy” despite the fact that the Taungdaw Thathanabaing had been specifically singled out as a necessary participant in the Chief Commissioner's original memo (RPI 1891–92, Report on Upper Burma, 24). The plan was published in the official government Burma Gazette and reprinted in the Journal of the Maha-Bodhi Society (1893), without obtaining the Taungdaw Thathanabaing's approval. When faced with this fait accompli, the Taungdaw Thathanabaing returned the snub. He rejected the scheme completely and refused to cooperate with government officials in any way, making the plan unworkable (RPI 1892–93, Report on Upper Burma, 1). The government Patamabyan examinations had to be shelved until after the Taungdaw Thathanabaing's death in 1895, when the lack of a recognized head of the sangha meant there could be no official organized resistance (QRPI 1892–97, 63–64). The 1891 project stalled because of what seemed to be irreconcilable differences. In the eyes of contemporaries, the conflict appeared to be a monumental and classic clash between the forces of progressive modernity in the civilizing mission and a conservative local religious elite looking to retain and consolidate a power base that was no longer relevant.

Pali Scholarship “in Its Truest Sense”

Beyond the larger conflict over educational policy, part of the conflict between the Taungdaw Thathanabaing and the Director of Public Instruction lay in competing visions of the purpose of Pali examinations. Pope, concerned that the Taungdaw Thathanabaing and Pakhan Sayadaw's position would spread greater resistance to education policy, sought to minimize their influence. Unlike others within the colonial state who promoted the idea of a central monastic authority to rein in rebellious tendencies in the sangha, Pope tried to dismiss the Taungdaw Thathanabaing and elite Mandalay monks as only one faction among many in the sangha, hoping to bolster those others who supported his policies. His announcement of the Patamabyan examinations in 1892 stated that it

However, historically, such goals had been among the prime purposes of the Patamabyan: to recruit and indoctrinate the royally sanctioned elite of the sangha. In this, the examinations under the monarchy had been a technique to promote centralization and a means of bolstering the authority of the Thathanabaing and his Thudhamma Council (Dhammasami Reference Dhammasami2004; Pranke Reference Pranke2004). The position of the Thathanabaing had been mainly defined by designing and carrying out royal projects for promotion of the sāsana; thus the Taungdaw Thathanabaing and the Mandalay elite around him suffered a serious loss in both purpose and authority with the fall of the monarchy. Therefore, if the colonial state were willing to renew examinations as a practice of promoting the sāsana, centralization and renewed authority would have been a key purpose of the Patamabyan examination for the Taungdaw Thathanabaing.

Moreover, there were conflicting ideas about what constituted knowledge of Pali that amounted to fundamental differences of linguistic epistemology. Prior to submitting the larger proposal for open Pali examinations, Pope held a trial examination in Pali for fourth-standard students in government and monastery schools. The examination was a “short and easy paper” on the Pareitkyi (Paritta), a set of commonly used ritual texts. The results were deeply disappointing to Pope and shook the commonly held belief that the monasteries offered strong training in Pali literacy. As he wrote, “of all of the [seventy] candidates, only six passed and these came from a lay school in Mandalay managed by a Lower Burman” (RPI 1891–92, Report on Upper Burma, 24–25). From this, Pope concluded that in stark contrast to the claims that monastery schools were excellent at teaching Pali, they were in fact highly ineffective. He wrote, “Not only did the ecclesiastical, monastic and all other candidates know nothing of Pali grammar, but not one could translate into Burmese one of the commonest Pali gathas” (RPI 1891–92, Report on Upper Burma, 25). The students of the monastery schools were not capable of meeting the type of standards for Pali literacy the Director of Public Instruction expected from sustained language instruction. Despite the concerns of both Burmese and Europeans that Pali scholarship had declined since 1885, it could not be the case that Pali instruction in the monasteries had eroded so quickly. Instead, the issue was conflicting ideas of what constituted knowledge of Pali and what counted for demonstrating understanding.

As Justin McDaniel explains in his study of northern Thai and Lao monastic pedagogy, knowledge of Pali took many forms in Buddhist monastic settings in Southeast Asia. He asks,

Pali was employed in many different modes in Buddhist practice, and the study of Pali served to address a number of different ritual, practical, and epistemological needs. The ability to recite a Pali text from memory often took precedence over other forms of knowledge. In Burma, a linguistic technology had arisen to address problems of comprehension. Nissaya, a particular hybrid linguistic form, interspersed word-by-word Burmese translation of the Pali text (Okell Reference Okell1965). Memorizing and reciting a nissaya version of the text was sufficient to demonstrate mastery and comprehension and was key to linguistic achievement in this system. However, such techniques did not correspond with what constituted language learning in European scholarship. Memorizing the Burmese/Pali nissaya texts was a method of comprehension very different from that employed in European schools. Pope held certain expectations about the types of interpretation and translation that constituted Pali knowledge in administering the examination, ones that clearly did not match up with the practices of those students.

It is telling that the students passing Pope's trial examination were educated by a lay scholar from Lower Burma, the region that had been under British control since 1852. This teacher had likely been educated in Rangoon with a Western-style Pali grammar that would train students in the European methods of translation and comprehension. Lower Burma was well established in the networks of European Pali scholars and had sought to include Pali in the curriculum of the education department since at least 1878 when Emanuel Forchhammer was appointed professor of Pali at Rangoon High School (Forchhammer Reference Forchhammer1882). Western-style Pali grammar books, based on Greek and Latin grammars, date back at least that far as well. James Gray published First Lessons in Pali in 1878 while he was schoolmaster at the government school in Moulmein and went on to publish a series of Pali textbooks on the European model when he joined Forchhammer in Rangoon (Gray Reference Gray1878, Reference Gray1883).

The Director of Public Instruction was concerned with, in his words, “the encouragement of Pali scholarship in its truest sense” (RPI 1897–98, 4). The issue is what he meant by the “truest sense.” While officials generally admired the education offered to boys in monasteries and the levels of Burmese literacy it had produced, most were convinced that the monks did not have a serious or scientific knowledge of Pali. Pali, in their perception, had great potential, both for the superior intellectual training that the study of classical languages offered and because Pali was the vehicle for the ethical tradition of Buddhism, perceived as particularly consonant with modernity. However, many felt that the Burmese were unable to reap these benefits because they did not employ the correct methods of study.

Pope felt the examinations would, in the words of the Chief Commissioner ordering the creation of the examination in 1892, help “revive and perpetuate the intelligent study of a language so attractive to every student of philology but dear to the Burmese as the language of their sacred books” (Myanmar National Archives 1892). By this account, not only did Pali and Sanskrit, like Greek and Latin, provide a rigorous training in grammar and reason, but also their study could help form intelligent and well-educated Asians who could return their societies to the heights achieved in their ancient civilizations. This position had long held sway in colonial India and formed the core of the Orientalist approach to education there, but it had since been supplanted by the liberal utilitarian approach of Thomas Macaulay, who advocated abandoning Asian knowledge and languages in favor of a system that sought to inculcate a liberal universal modernity in the minds of the colonized through teaching European thought and “civilization.” Although by this time Macaulay's liberal approach had become official policy elsewhere in British India, the Orientalist position still had advocates in Burma. The position was represented repeatedly in debates on support for the study of Pali (India Office 1908; Duroiselle Reference Duroiselle1906; Rost Reference Rost1885).

Richard Temple, in an 1876 manuscript entitled “A Plea for the Study of Pali in British Burma,” argued that the Burmese really did not know their sacred language at all. While he admitted that most Burmese had a “parrot” knowledge of Pali texts and could recite “the old palm leaf paraphrase” (meaning the Pali/Burmese nissaya), he doubted he could find a monk who could “explain the metre of a simple sloka; who could parse a Pali sentence, conjugate a verb or even decline a noun, who in short had any real knowledge of the classical language of his country” (Temple Reference Temple1876). Many shared his opinion that this was a great waste, that the rigorous study of a classical language was key to intellectual and civilizational achievement. These sentiments reprised the early nineteenth-century Orientalist projects that promoted the study of Sanskrit as a means to recover the best aspects of India's past civilization (Cohn Reference Cohn1996, 25–30, 47–48). Temple, decrying the Burmese state of affairs asked,

Pali could serve the Burmese as a means both to recover the great civilization of their past and to train them for future achievements, in the same ways that Greek and Latin were perceived to be to key to European modernity. The training in Greek and Latin that European men of their generation had received was credited not just with making them civilized and disciplined but with providing access to the key knowledge that had propelled European civilization to its recent achievements. Thus the government should promote Pali scholarship through examinations to provide the Burmese access to both intellectual training and the potential resources of their cultural heritage. Pope's 1891 proposal to revive the Patamabyan examination was driven by this logic, and he saw this as Pali scholarship in its “truest sense.”

The colonial state had administered a set of Pali exams long before this proposal to revive the Patamabyan examinations. In line with policies in India promoting Sanskrit scholarship among Europeans, the government sponsored Pali examinations for colonial civil servants up until 1880, offering monetary awards to those who demonstrated proficiency in the language. Those who supported such examinations recognized, as one deputy commissioner put it, “a growing tendency towards a more liberal view of the functions of Government and the proposition that nothing is wholly alien from its interests which tends to a further understanding of the people” (India Office 1908).

There was a strong sentiment among some in the colonial administration that Pali was key to understanding the Burmese culture and people and thus facilitating the larger projects of “moral and intellectual improvement” (Bagshawe Reference Bagshawe, Pichard and Robinne1998). It is telling that in the manuscript version of Temple's “A Plea for the Study of Pali” (Reference Temple1876) available in the India Office of the British library, where he decries that most Burmese have no “real knowledge of the classical language of his country,” he originally wrote “the classical knowledge of his country” and only replaced it with “language” later. Pali, in this Orientalist view, was synonymous with all knowledge of Burmese culture. In memos seeking to preserve Pali examinations and awards for civil servants, Charles Duroiselle would argue that “[t]he colloquial language, the people themselves, their habits, customs and various religious and secular ceremonies, are saturated with Buddhistic ideas through the medium of Pali.” Thus it was vital to understand Pali to have “a thorough knowledge of the people [and] a ready access to their heart, sympathy and respect” (India Office 1908). Knowledge of Pali by colonial administrators could facilitate government interventions that required access to hearts and minds. Here classical language as the key to culture becomes a central tool of colonial intervention. Pali study had the potential to expose a different kind of knowledge of their colonial subjects, just as it offered the potential for colonial subjects to know their own civilization and themselves.

Both colonial officials’ knowledge of Pali and the promotion of Pali scholarship among Burmese through the Patamabyan examinations were understood to have the potential to facilitate the state's larger goals. The government sought to sponsor Pali Patamabyan examinations to forge modern study of Pali to provide rigorous intellectual training and access to the best aspects of their civilization, past and future. At the same time, the exams themselves became a means of gaining local sympathy by reviving what were, to the colonial point of view, the central and best aspects of Burmese culture.

Pali Examinations and Burmese Innovations

There are many reasons why the Thathanabaing's rejection of Pope's plan for Pali examinations cannot be read as simply a conservative stance, seeking to preserve an unchanging tradition, not least of which is that, as Alexey Kirichenko (Reference Kirichenko and Borchert2018) explains, the colonial construction of the position of Thathanabaing was itself an innovation. Moreover, from a historian's perspective, the creation and reform of Pali examinations in Burma throughout the nineteenth century, like many aspects of sāsana reform, were projects that sought to induce or manage social change carried out through an appeal for the preservation of sāsana as tradition. Royally sponsored Pali examinations from the late eighteenth century onwards had sought to shift cultural authority between different groups through the reform of curriculum, the creation of royally sponsored factions in the sangha, and massive public celebrations.Footnote ³ Pali examinations in the colonial era would follow suit in their own way.

Despite the Thathanabaing's rejection, multiple groups of Burmese would come to embrace Pali examinations as a key aspect of Buddhist practice after 1896. This came first in support for the government's Patamabyan examination and soon after in the creation of independent examinations sponsored by new lay Buddhist associations. In this, Pali examinations again became means of managing changes in social status and cultural authority, now created by the conditions of colonial rule. Techniques of reform in order to preserve the Buddha's teachings, or sāsana, and a discourse of the decline of the sāsana offered a ready repository of symbols and means for adapting to new conditions. Pali examinations, as a key aspect of royal sāsana reforms, offered an excellent opportunity for a variety of groups to carry out their visions. The fall of the monarchy and the arrival of British rule in Upper Burma brought a renewed concern about the decline of the sāsana. However, the concern that the Buddha's teachings and dispensation were in decline was not a description of a unique set of historical or empirical conditions, but a means of articulating and interpreting changing conditions. A discourse of decadence had characterized and justified the agendas of Buddhist and royal reformers throughout the nineteenth century, responding to different circumstances. The discourse of decline became a way of talking about change and reformulating futures.

There were certainly some Burmese, like the teacher from Lower Burma whose students did well in the preliminary examination, who shared Pope's understanding of Pali scholarship. When the colonial state revived Pali examinations in 1896, it chose not to appeal to any monastic authority for support but instead to a specific group of lay Buddhist community leaders (RPI 1897–98, 2–3). Chief among these were wealthy Rangoon Buddhist patrons U Hla Oung and Daw Mya May, who would found a set of schools to teach Buddhism in English and promote interpretations gleaned from European editions of Pali texts. They represented the group of Burmese most influenced by European ideals of Pali as a classical language promoted by the government's original proposal.

There were other Burmese modes of appreciating and appropriating Pali as well. The government examinations introduced in 1896 were wildly popular and spurred the creation of other Pali examinations by independent groups of lay Buddhists, a movement that would spread across the province (Smith Reference Smith1965, 69). Whereas the monks showed strong interest in Pali examinations after 1896, the laity demonstrated even greater enthusiasm for both sponsoring and celebrating monastic test takers and founding new Pali examinations outside of the government system. The Patamabyan examinations, and especially the conferral of the Patamakyaw—the honor given annually to the top monastic candidate in the examination—offered an opportunity for the colonial government to display its generosity and values. British colonialism was famous for its rule through spectacle, and the Patamabyan was to be no exception to this. The colonial government quickly found that the conferral of monastic titles, including the Aggamahapandita awarded to the famous Ledi Sayadaw, was a way to both reward those who it felt were in line with its goals and garner public sympathy through sponsoring popular Buddhist events. However, Buddhist laypeople redeployed these events toward other purposes. The laity expanded these spectacles into “celebrations” of Burmese dedication to Buddhism and pariyatti study (Hanthawaddy Weekly Review 1900).

Pali examinations became important events, not just for the Buddhists being examined but for large groups of Buddhist laypeople who could participate by organizing, donating, and observing examinations and thus gain merit from the Pali scholarship. People brought together old methods and new to celebrate the examinations—publicizing the names of successful candidates in newspapers across the province and offering donations for travel and awards. One examination paraded “successful candidates through the streets” of their town in “decorated cars with music” (Union Buddha Sasana Council 1954, 17). New associations for laypeople, known as Patamabyan Dayaka (sponsors) associations, sprang up at the site of each of the examinations. These allowed lay patrons to coordinate their donations and the preparations for the events. In addition, the tools of the emerging Buddhist print media were deployed not only to solicit and organize lay support but also to announce and celebrate the accomplishments of those examined. Burmese newspapers and Buddhist journals would report on preparations for the events and the names and amounts of donors, as well as announce the names of successful candidates.Footnote ⁴

In many ways this response was a revival of the lay and royal roles in the previous Patamabyan examinations. In King Mindon's time in the mid-nineteenth century, the examinations had served as key public festivals of virtuoso monastic scholarship (Dhammasami Reference Dhammasami2004, 126–30). Examinations celebrated Pali scholarship as an achievement for the community as a whole and as significant merit-making opportunities. Mindon built special halls for the examinations and promoted attendance as a means of public merit making. The events were constructed as spectacles:

While the lay supporters of the new colonial Patamabyan examinations could not match this level of grandeur, reproducing this earlier function offered prominent lay Buddhists opportunities to identify themselves as significant public patrons and to produce great merit, as well as to establish themselves as a part of an important new middle class. Pali examinations became mechanisms to identify new groups of benefactors among the Burmese laity and to establish oneself as a key local or regional donor.

The interest in Pali examinations was not limited to support for the government's program. Independent Pali examinations flowered in small towns across Burma, sponsored by Buddhist associations with a multiplicity of goals and agendas. Through the first decades of the twentieth century, these exams multiplied; some of the larger towns sponsored two or three examinations per year. Buddhists in Yenangyaung were bold enough to create their own exams and generously invite the government to participate (Burma Echo 1907). A 1954 pamphlet described ten of the most famous examinations that had been founded since 1896, but noted that “there are many similar Pariyatti examinations held at different parts of Burma under the auspices of various Buddhist organizations” (Union Buddha Sasana Council 1954, 17). Organizations sponsored not just monastic pariyatti scholarship but lay-focused examinations as well, such as those for reciting Ledi Sayadaw's Burmese Abhidhamma verses and ones for schoolchildren reciting the Mangala Sutta. And while some of these organizations and their exams were short lived, others proved tenacious and enduring social institutions because they were able to respond to locally articulated goals: one organization continued to hold exams even during the Japanese occupation and war of the 1940s (Union Buddha Sasana Council 1954, 16–17).

There was another undercurrent to the Burmese desire to promote Pali scholarship, one that would have appealed especially to those organizers most concerned with a Buddhist revival. For them, it was neither the rational scholarship nor “national culture” nor public recognition of Buddhist patrons that was at stake, but the sāsana itself. The founding rationale of the new independent associations that came to sponsor examinations specifically referenced the threat of the decline of the sāsana under colonial rule and the responsibility of all lay Buddhists to work for its preservation. The loss of the Burmese monarchy had produced many anxieties; key among them was concern about the fate of monks and their pariyatti scholarship, much of which had relied on royal patronage (Turner Reference Turner2014). Anāgatavaṃsa texts, “histories of the future” detailing the eventual loss of the sāsana, offer detailed accounts of loss of the pariyatti textual knowledge and its key place in the survival of the Buddha's dispensation. Ensuring that monks and laypeople preserved the texts through memorization and comprehension exams offered an essential measure to prevent the complete loss of the sāsana during this period of unsettling change.

Alongside this grand purpose, organizers understood the importance of Pali examinations in much more mundane terms as well. Examinations brought together groups of people from across the colonial province and increased public focus on Buddhism as a collective cause. They had the potential to tie together local efforts (through locally sponsored examinations) with Burma-wide efforts, bringing a broad range of people together in new networks of the movement that was developing after the fall of the monarchy.