Wizder has curated 500 multiple-choice questions from 13 O/L Buddhism Paper I papers (2013 to 2025), each tagged with the topic it tests: an episode from the Buddha's life, a doctrine list, a council, a period of the sasana in Sri Lanka, a work of art or literature. We counted how many different sittings each topic appears in. Here is what 13 papers repeat.
The headline: a short list carries most of the paper
The questions carry 56 distinct topic tags. 3 of them appear in every one of the 13 sittings: බෞද්ධ කලාව, කර්මය, ධම්මපදය. Widen that to topics appearing in 10 or more sittings and you have 10 topics covering about 46% of all the questions we hold. Only 7 tags are one-offs.
ප්රශ්න පත්ර 13 ක් පුරා විවිධ මාතෘකා 56 ක් හමු වේ. ඉන් 3 ක් සෑම විභාග වාරයකම අසා ඇත. මාතෘකා 10 ක් සම්පූර්ණ ප්රශ්න පත්රයෙන් සියයට 46 ක් පමණ ආවරණය කරයි.
What that means in practice: this paper rewards knowing a modest number of things precisely. The doctrine lists, the life episodes and the history of the sasana in Sri Lanka are asked year after year, in new wording, and the wording is where marks are lost.
The topics that come back most often
Ranked by sittings covered, then by total questions.
| # | Topic | Years it appeared in | Questions |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | බෞද්ධ කලාව | 13 of 13 | 32 |
| 2 | කර්මය | 13 of 13 | 31 |
| 3 | ධම්මපදය | 13 of 13 | 15 |
| 4 | බුද්ධ චරිතය | 12 of 13 | 36 |
| 5 | පාරමිතා හා ජාතක කථා | 12 of 13 | 25 |
| 6 | පටිච්ච සමුප්පාදය | 12 of 13 | 22 |
| 7 | ධර්ම සංගායනා | 11 of 13 | 24 |
| 8 | බෞද්ධ රාජ්ය පාලනය | 11 of 13 | 20 |
| 9 | ගිහි ජීවිතය | 10 of 13 | 17 |
| 10 | සිඟාලෝවාද සූත්රය | 10 of 13 | 10 |
| 11 | සූත්ර දේශනා | 9 of 13 | 22 |
| 12 | බෞද්ධ සාහිත්යය | 9 of 13 | 14 |
| 13 | සමාජ සමගිය | 9 of 13 | 12 |
| 14 | ශ්රද්ධාව | 9 of 13 | 11 |
| 15 | ආර්ය අෂ්ටාංගික මාර්ගය | 9 of 13 | 10 |
How to use this list
- Learn the lists as lists. Many Paper I questions on this subject ask for the missing item, the right order, or the odd one out in a doctrine list. Knowing the list by heart is most of the mark; the explanation under each question here shows which item the distractors swapped.
- Do each topic's questions from several different years together. The same episode or the same list is asked in new wording each time, and recognising it is the skill.
- Then switch to your own list of the questions you got wrong. It is a better plan than any ranking, including this one.
- ධර්ම කරුණු ලැයිස්තු ලෙස ම මතක තබා ගන්න. එක් එක් මාතෘකාවේ ප්රශ්න විවිධ වර්ෂවලින් එකට කරන්න. ඉන්පසු ඔබට වැරදුණු ප්රශ්න ලැයිස්තුව ම ඔබේ සැලැස්ම කර ගන්න.
Method, so you can argue with it
One tag per question, assigned during curation and checked against the marking scheme alongside the answer. Tags name what the question tests, at the level the syllabus itself uses, which is why there are a few dozen rather than a few hundred. Paper II is not included: it is not multiple choice, and this count is about Paper I.
One of them, in full
බුදුරජාණන් වහන්සේ මහා මොග්ගල්ලාන සූත්රය දේශනා කළේ කුමන ස්ථානයේදී ද?
- Aවිශාලා මහනුවර වන පියසකදී
- Bගග්ගරා පොකුණ සමීපයේදී
- Cකලන්දක නිවාප නම් ස්ථානයේදී
- Dමහී ගංගා තීරය අසලදී