page_title: Buddhist councils
section_title: Theravada Buddhist council in 1954 (Sixth Buddhist Council)
hierarchical_section_title: Buddhist councils / Theravada Buddhist council in 1954 (Sixth Buddhist Council)
caption_attribution_description: English: Chattha Sangāyana (Sixth Buddhist Council) This huge hall was built to house the Sixth Buddhist Council convened in 1955 to recite the Pāli Tipitaka and authenticate the texts. On the 2,500th Anniversary of the Buddha’s final passing away (Parinibbāna), 2,500 monks assembled from the Theravāda Buddhist countries. Venerable Mahāsi Sayādaw performed the central role as Chief Questioner (Pucchaka), which was fulfilled by Venerable Mahākassapa in the First Council, held three months after the Buddha’s passing away. To house this great hall, an artificial hill was constructed by voluntary workers at Kaba-Aye in Rangoon. This great hall is still used to hold the examinations in the Tipitaka. Accommodation and a grand Sima hall were built on the same site for the monks participating in the Council. The Kaba-Aye (World Peace) pagoda is also in the same park.
context_page_description: Since the death of the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, Buddhist monastic communities have periodically convened to settle doctrinal and disciplinary disputes and to revise and correct the contents of the sutras. These gatherings are often termed "Buddhist councils". Accounts of these councils are recorded in Buddhist texts as having begun immediately following the death of the Buddha and have continued into the modern era.
  The earliest councils—for which there is little historical evidence outside of the sutras—are regarded as canonical events by every Buddhist tradition. However, the historicity and details of these councils remains a matter of dispute in modern Buddhist studies.
context_section_description: The Sixth Council was called at Kaba Aye in Yangon (formerly Rangoon) in 1954, 83 years after the fifth one was held in Mandalay. It was sponsored by the Burmese Government led by the then Prime Minister, the Honourable U Nu. He authorized the construction of the Maha Passana Guha, the "great cave", an artificial cave very much like India's Sattapanni Cave where the first Buddhist Council had been held. Upon its completion The Council met on 17 May 1954.
  As in the case of the preceding councils, its first objective was to affirm and preserve the genuine Dhamma and Vinaya. However it was unique insofar as the monks who took part in it came from eight countries. These two thousand five hundred learned Theravada monks came from Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, India, and Nepal. Germany can only be counted as the nationality of the only two western monks in attendance: Venerable Nyanatiloka Mahathera and Venerable Nyanaponika Thera. They both were invited from Sri Lanka. The late Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw was appointed the noble task of asking the required questions about the Dhamma of the Venerable Bhadanta Vicittasarabhivamsa who answered all of them learnedly and satisfactorily. By the time this council met all the participating countries had had the Pali Tripiṭaka rendered into their native scripts, with the exception of India.
  The traditional recitation of the Buddhist Scriptures took two years and the Tripiṭaka and its allied literature in all the scripts were painstakingly examined and their differences noted down and the necessary corrections made and all the versions were then collated. It was found that there was not much difference in the content of any of the texts. Finally, after the Council had officially approved them, all of the books of the Tipitaka and their commentaries were prepared for printing on modern presses and published in the Burmese script. This notable achievement was made possible through the dedicated efforts of the two thousand five hundred monks and numerous lay people. Their work came to an end on the evening of Vesak, 24 May 1956, exactly two and a half millennia after Buddha's Parinibbana, according to the traditional Theravada dating.
caption: The Sixth Buddhist Council
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "800", "Image ImageLength": "367", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "600", "Image YResolution": "600", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS5 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2012:04:18 08:00:11", "Image ExifOffset": "228", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "378", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7137", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "800", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "367"}