Vijjota

Bhaddanta Vijjota Mahā Thera (Burmese: ဘဒ္ဒန္တဝိဇ္ဇောတမဟာထေရ်; 5 March 1930 – 20 March 2022), commonly known as Vijjotārum Sayadaw (also Vijjotāyon Sayadaw; Burmese: ဝိဇ္ဇောတာရုံဆရာတော်), was a Burmese Buddhist monk. He was the 15th Thathanabaing (the equivalent of the Supreme Patriarch) and Mahanayaka of the Shwekyin Nikaya of Myanmar, from 2017 to his death in 2022.^[1] Chief abbot of Vijjotāyon Pariyatti Monastery in Mayangon Township, the mahathera was a State Ovādācariya Sayadaw (lit. 'Guiding acariya of the country').^[2][3]

Bhaddanta Vijjota Maha Thera
ဝိဇ္ဇောတမဟာထေရ်
Title	Abhidhaja Agga Mahā Saddhamma Jotika (2021) Abhidhaja Mahā Raṭṭha Guru (2018) Agga Mahā Paṇḍita (1993) Agga Mahā Ganthavācaka Paṇḍita (1992)
Personal
Born	(1930-03-05)5 March 1930 Mudon Township, Mon State, Burma, British Raj
Died	20 March 2022(2022-03-20) (aged 92) Yangon, Myanmar
Religion	Buddhism
School	Theravada
Sect	Shwekyin Nikāya
Dharma names	Vijjota
Organization
Temple	Vijjotāyon Pariyatti Monastery
Senior posting
Period in office	2017 – 2022 (Thathanabaing of Shwekyin Nikāya)
Predecessor	Waso Sayadaw

Biography

The mahathera served as lecturer at Pajjotāyon Monastery in Myaungmya, vinayadhara and chairperson of Sangha Nayaka Committee of the nikaya of Mayangon Township, ovādācariya of Kaba Aye Pagoda, and associate head of vinaya-byan department of the nikaya.^[4] At the 19th Shwekyin Nikaya Sangha Conference held in 2015, the mahathera, alongside Madaya Thahtay Sayadaw and Sitagu Sayadaw, was appointed an upaukkaṭṭha (associate thathanabaing), and upon the death of Waso Sayadaw, the 14th thathanabaing,^[5] on 14 February 2017, he became the 15th thathanabaing of the nikaya.^[6]

The mahathera was offered, by the Burmese government, the titles of Agga Mahā Ganthavācaka Paṇḍita, Agga Mahā Paṇḍita, Abhidhaja Mahā Raṭṭha Guru, Abhidhaja Agga Mahā Saddhamma Jotika in 1992, 1993, 2018^[7] and 2021^[8] respectively.

The mahathera died on 20 March 2022 in Yangon, at the age of 92.^[4]

References

1. "ရွှေကျင် သာသနာပိုင်များ" [Thathanabaings of Shwekyin Nikaya]. BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). Retrieved 21 March 2022.
2. "ပြည်တွင်းပြည်ပမှ ရွှေကျင်ဂိုဏ်းဝင် သံဃာအပါးတစ်ထောင် ကြွရောက်မည့် အကြိမ် (၂၀) မြောက် ရွှေကျင်နိကာယသံဃာ့အစည်းအဝေး မှော်ဘီမြို့နယ် ဓမ္မဒူတဇေတဝန်တောရ ဆေကိန္ဒာရာမ ကျောင်းတိုက်တွင် သုံးရက်ကြာကျင်းပမည်". Eleven Media Group Co., Ltd. Retrieved 21 March 2022.
3. "ရွှေကျင် နိကာယ သံဃာ့ အစည်းအဝေး". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). Retrieved 21 March 2022.
4. "(၁၅) ပါးမြောက် ရွှေကျင်သာသနာပိုင်ဆရာတော် ပျံလွန်တော်မူ" [15th Thathanabaing of Shwekyin Nikaya dies]. BBC News မြန်မာ. Retrieved 21 March 2022.
5. "ရွှေကျင်သာသနာပိုင် ဝါဆိုဆရာတော်ပျံလွန်". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). Retrieved 21 March 2022.
6. "ရွှေကျင်သာသနာပိုင် အန္တိမအဂ္ဂိဈာပန စည်ကားစွာကျင်းပ". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). Retrieved 21 March 2022.
7. "သာသနာတော်ဆိုင်ရာ ဘွဲ့တံဆိပ်တော်များ ဆက်ကပ်လှူဒါန်း" [Religious titles were offered]. The Mirror (in Burmese). 4 January 2018. Retrieved 21 March 2022 – via Online Burma/Myanmar Library.
8. "သာသနာတော်ဆိုင်ရာ ဘွဲ့တံဆိပ်တော်များ ဆက်ကပ်လှူဒါန်း" [Religious titles were offered]. The Mirror (in Burmese). 6 January 2021. Retrieved 21 March 2022 – via Online Burma/Myanmar Library.