It occured to me that people don’t know one type of Buddhist monk from the other and a post was needed to explain this. First a little bit of history. Theravada is the closest thing as one can get to the original form of Buddhism and is based on the Pali texts. The countries that have Theravada as their national religion are; Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia. It dates back to the Buddha from 5th century BCE Later, came Mahayana - Chinese Buddhism of the 1st century BCE. The texts are based on Chinese and Sanskrit. It is most popular in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Tibetan Buddhism is from Tibet and also followed nationally in Bhutan. It is from the 7-9th century. Their texts are in Sanskrit and Tibetan.