How the Rāmañña Dhammayuttika began (note that the Rāmañña Dhammayuttika is not the same as the Dhammayuttika Nikaya, the latter being the reform movement enacted by Prince Mongkut) :
"Mon language is a relative of Khmer, and they, together with other
languages, compose the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language
family. Today, people who speak Mon (and their living descendants, who
may nor may not speak Mon) mainly live in Burma/Myanmar, where
Burmese speakers are the majority, and in Thailand, where Thai speakers
are the majority. However, each of the three—Mon, Thai, and Burmese—
belong to different language families.
Burma/Myanmar currently has about 1 to 1.2 million Mon speakers
as an ethnic minority. In Thailand, a Mon cultural leader enumerated that
the country had 94,229 Mon people during 1969–1972 (Sujaritlak et al.
1995: 13–15). Today the Mon in Thailand are in the process of linguistically
assimilating and the young generation (those under 30–40 years old) have
mostly became monolingual Thai speakers.
In mainland Southeast Asian history, the Mon are well known as
early accepters of elements of Indian civilization, such as Buddhism. For
instance, historians generally think that Mon was the dominant language
of Dvāravatī, an ancient Indic civilization of the 6th–10th century, prior to
Thai/Tai speakers prevailing and assuming hegemony over the Chao Phraya basin in approximately the 13th century.
In today’s lower Burma/Myanmar, the Kalyānī inscriptions erected by King Dhammacetī in both Mon and Pāli commemorate his purification of the saṅgha through the importation of the ordination lineage from Sri Lanka to the Kalyānī Sīma in Pegu in the late 15th century, which is well known as one of the monumental projects of Theravādin history in Southeast Asia.
As mentioned above, the monastic authority in Bangkok recognized
the existence of a Mon order, the Rāmañña Nikāya, until at least 1902. In
addition, Mon monks enjoyed two privileges in 19th century Siam/Thailand.
First, an official division of the saṅgha, called the “Rāmañña Division” (T.
Khana Rāman), was comprised of Mon monks.(9) A senior Mon monk was Governor of the Rāmañña Division (T. Chao Khana Rāman) and “nominally”
governed the Mon saṅgha in the whole kingdom.(10) His rank in the state
saṅgha was quite high: the last Governor of the Rāmañña Division was
conferred the Dhamma (T. Thamma) grade of Phrarāchākhana-phūyai (the
title for highest ranking monks); this was about the 15th highest-ranking
monk in the whole kingdom in 1910 (Sommot and Damrong 2002 (1923):
21, 44–45). Second, an official Buddhist examination was held specifically
for Mon monks and novices by orally translating between Pāli and Mon
(T. Parian Rāman). No Theravāda monks from any other ethnic minority
enjoyed either of these privileges in and around Bangkok during the 19th
century.
In the early 20th century, Thai authorities abolished the two privileges
enjoyed by Mon monks. The Rāmañña Division was dissolved and its
members were integrated into the divisions of the Mahā Nikāya around
1902, when the Saṅgha Act, the first modern state law related to saṅgha
administration, was enacted. The last Governor of the Rāmañña Division,
whose position perhaps became only in name after 1902, died in 1912 and
his deputy died in 1919 (Sommot and Damrong 2002 (1923): 180, 189–
190). More seriously for the future of the Mon language in Thailand, the
Parian Rāman was also abolished in 1912. Prince Wachirayān, a Saṅgharāja who reformed the official Buddhist examination during the 1910s, proposed the abolishment.(11) King Wachirāwut (Rāma VI) entirely approved of the proposal, believing that people all over the country should be educated in
Thai language and Thai letters to build a sense of comradeship without
dividing themselves as Thai, Mon, and Lao (NA. R.VI. file number between
S.11/7 and S.11/8).
Traditionally, Mon monasteries have taught Mon literacy to children in
the villages. However, when the Buddhist examination could no longer be
taken in Mon, the language became worthless as a means to improve one’s social status in Thailand. In addition to the vernacular itself, chanting Pāli with Mon pronunciation also gradually declined.
As part of this decline, Mon monks first became “bilingual” in Pāli chanting, that is, they were able to chant either with Mon or Thai pronunciation depending on the situation.(12) The case of a Mon monastery in a Mon village 60 km from Bangkok (in an area where Mon language is most spoken in Thailand (today) illustrates this process.
Until the late 1950s, the Mon monks there (who belonged to the Mahā Nikāya) chanted pāṭimokkha only with Mon pronunciation.(13) From the late 1950s, they began chanting pāṭimokkha
alternately in Thai and Mon pronunciation and thereafter the practice of
chanting it with Mon pronunciation disappeared. Although one can still
sometimes hear chanting with Mon pronunciation in this monastery today, for example when the five or eight precepts are administered to lay people, the pāṭimokkha and upasampadā, which are part of saṅghakamma, are now chanted only with Thai pronunciation.(14)
With the exception of only extremely rare cases, all the Mon monasteries belonging to the Mahā Nikāya in Thailand have put an end to chanting upasampadā with Mon pronunciation.(15) This may be the reason why the Mon saṅgha is now not commonly called the Rāmañña Nikāya in Thailand, both officially and unofficially. The boundary between the Mon and Thai saṅgha has become more obscure than before, as Mon monks have come to speak in Thai and chant Pāli with Thai pronunciation more and more, and mostly conduct saṅghakamma, especially upasampadā, only in Pāli with Thai pronunciation.(16)
- The birth of the Rāmañña Dhammayuttika
Some Mon monks, however, were not integrated into the Mahā Nikāya
Divisions around 1902. These monks formed the Rāmañña Dhammayuttika, on which this paper will focus. It may be said that the Rāmañña Dhammayuttika was born accidentally, during the Thai authorities’ efforts to centralize the saṅgha before 1902…"
From The Third Nikāya-like Order in Thailand:
Rāmañña Dhammayuttika, an Unknown Ethnic Mon Order
throughout the 20th Century by Wada, Michihiro.