22/05/2026
🙏Who are the Thilashin?
Who are the Thilashin?
Forced away from their homes along with others from Manipur, two children were given to Burmese renunciants in the Innwa area near Mandalay. One of them, a boy, was sent to a monastery. He would grow up to become the famous monk Shan Galay Kyun Sayadaw, a member of the Shwegyin sect renowned for his ability to memorize the entire Pāli canon. His sister, a Monday-born girl between three and six years old, was given to elder nuns and also became famous. She donned the white robes of the nun, learned Pāli grammar, and became keen in the Buddhist scriptures. Named Mae Kin, she eventually made her way to Sagaing Hill, a place famous for meditation and for its “nooks and crannies”. While meditating on the hillside there with another nun, Mae Nat Pyi, they were approached by Prince Mindon, who had wandered off from the rest of his retinue. He was struck by their peaceful presence and when he became king, he asked the two of them to live at the palace to teach the ladies of the court. Both initially agreed, but soon Mae Nat Pyi left, and Mae Kin carried on her role at the palace. Her influence inspired some female royals to ordain as nuns, and her many students continued her legacy after she died in 1882.
The scholar monk Rawe Htun wrote about Mae Kin and her lineage in a book originally published in 1964. In its conclusion, he remarked that Christianity had threatened Buddhism in Burma since missionaries started arriving in the late 1700s. Burmese girls were especially vulnerable to conversion by Christian nuns as they were unable to receive education as easily as Burmese boys. Referring to girls as “literally the life-source of the nation”, he called for Buddhist nuns to become educated in the scriptures and to teach others, take up meditation, or help others in social service by running orphanages or homes for the elderly, winning the hearts of those who were suffering.
In 2019, more than half a century after Rawe Htun wrote and 137 years after Mae Kin’s death, thousands of nuns in their pink robes lined the streets in Sagaing to catch a glimpse of a statue of Mae Kin and pay their respects to it. In their hands, they held aung tha pyay, a type of Eugenia plant symbolizing success or victory. The statue, surrounded with decorations, was placed in the back of a small Japanese-made open-bed truck so that everyone could see it as it slowly made its way to its final resting place. Loudspeakers on the truck announced its arrival and a long procession of cars drove behind it.
Most parts of Mae Kin’s nunnery as she knew it were long gone by 2019. However, there had been a concerted effort to revitalize her mausoleum, with a stone inscription marking the spot. There are no pictures of Mae Kin that I am aware of, but the statue reflects a very specific idea of what she had looked like. Even though the nuns of Mae Kin’s time most likely wore white, this new image is adorned with the pink robes of today’s thilashin, with the addition of the light-brown upper robe currently worn by senior teachers. By giving this “torchbearer of the modern nun” a three-dimensional form, the statue enables Mae Kin’s image to be worshipped and reflected upon.
The Myanmar Buddhist nun or thilashin has been decades if not centuries in the making. There is debate over whether bhikkhunīs, fully ordained nuns with a lineage dating back to the Buddha, were ever present in Burma. For example, Rawe Htun argued that the bhikkhunī lineage never made it there, and that Myanmar’s thilashin are modern-day paṇḍaraṅga paribbājikā nuns: a class of renunciant that existed even before the historical Buddha. Others, such as Burmese historian Than Tun (1956), have argued – citing stone inscriptions as evidence – that there were bhikkhunīs in Burma, but that the lineage died out sometime between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries CE. The questions of whether there were Burmese bhikkhunīs or not, and whether the lineage should be reinstated and be allowed in Myanmar is beyond the scope of my research. However, the thilashin have emerged in the present day as a “force to be reckoned with” (Kawanami 2013) and the study of their education and community building is largely understudied and ignored. So then who are the thilashin? Often translated as “owner of morality” (thila the Burmese pronunciation for the Pāli word sīla), they observe the 8-10 Precepts and they are indeed not bhikkhunīs. Therefore, they do not have to abide by the Bhikkhunī Vinaya, or rules and regulations prescribed in the Pāli canon. However, rules and regulations were formed in the early 1900s as a means for helping to define the thilashin, regulate her behavior, and to protect her. This small book of rules shows the collaboration between the founding nun from the nunnery Ayemyo Chaung and the first Maha Gandhayon Sayadaw, a famous monk known for his meditation teaching. It shows innovation in coming up with such a framework as well as the influence and adaptations of the rules and regulations of the Bhikkhunī Vinaya. This Thilashin Code of Conduct is still used in certain nunneries; however, the State Saṇgha Mahā Nāyaka Committee (government appointed senior monk committee) reworked it in the early 1990s. My current research looks at these texts and aims to show the variation and rich lives that Buddhist nuns lead. By researchers focusing on the bhikkhunī debate, we have lost sight on the important “knowledge communities” that have been made through creativity, perseverance, the influence of texts, and monk sympathizers (Seeger 2018; Collins and McDaniel 2013). I hope that my research can provide more insight regarding the lived experiences of the thilashin and the instrumental roles that they have played in the maintenance and propagation of the sāsana
References
Collins, Steven and McDaniel, Justin. 2010. “Buddhist ‘nuns’ (Mae Chi) and the Teaching of Pali in Contemporary Thailand.” Modern Asian Studies 44 (06): 1373–408.
Kawanami, Hiroko. 2013. Renunciation and Empowerment of Buddhist Nuns in Myanmar-Burma: Building a Community of Female Faithful. Leiden and Boston: Brill.
Rawe Htun. 2001. The Modern Buddhist Nun. Translated by San Lwin. U Tin Shein.
Seeger, Martin. 2018. Gender and the Path to Awakening: Hidden Histories of Nuns in Modern Thai Buddhism. Chaing Mai: Silkworm Books
Than Tun. 1956. History of Buddhism in Burma A.D. 1000–1300. PhD diss., University of London.
