The Ramanna Nikaya is the youngest of the three principal monastic fraternities of Sri Lanka, and it was founded on a concern for the strict purity of ordination and discipline.
A fresh ordination from the Mon country
The fraternity was founded in 1864 by Ambagahawatte Saranankara, who, dissatisfied with the state of the existing orders, travelled to receive ordination in the Ramanna, or Mon, region of Lower Burma, judging its lineage and its observance more authentic, and returned to establish a new fraternity named for that region. The founding impulse was reformist: a desire for an ordination free of the caste restriction of the Siyam Nikaya and for a stricter keeping of the monastic discipline than the founder believed the older orders maintained.
Reputation for rigour
The Ramanna Nikaya gained and has kept a reputation as the most disciplined and austere of the three fraternities, emphasising strict adherence to the Vinaya, meditation and forest monasticism, and it deliberately kept itself smaller and more rigorous rather than seeking size. It stands as the third of the Sri Lankan nikayas, after the caste-restricted Siyam Nikaya and the more broadly based Amarapura Nikaya, and its separate existence, like theirs, reflects the way disputes over caste and over the purity of ordination and discipline have repeatedly produced new fraternities in Sri Lankan Buddhism rather than reform within a single order.