there were four main apartment divisions in a traditional wooden monastery consisting of a principal shrine room(hpaya-hsaung or pyathat-hsaung) an adjoining intermediate area(sanu-hsaung), which may serve as a room lor the abbot and/or as a passageway between the shrine and the cavernous main room(hsaung-ma-gyi, and a smaller apartment at the western end which usually served as a storeroom(baw-ga-hsaung The edifice was usually surrounded by a wide veranda or zin-gyan where monks could take their daily exercise. To emphasize the hallowed nature of the building, each apartment was marked externally by a set of distinctive multi-storeyed roofs Like most wooden buildings in Burma monasteries were only one storey high. Due to the sacred nature of the head, the Burmese traditionally have not liked the idea of other people domiciled above them