 Literacy in Burmese, not to mention Pali, was the effective monopoly of the aristocracy and their monastic peers.At Pagan and at main provincial centres, Buddhist temples supported an increasingly sophisticated Pali scholarship, which specialised in grammar and philosophical-psychological ("abhidhamma") studies, and which reportedly won the admiration of Sinhalese experts.Besides religious texts, Pagan's monks read works in a variety of languages on prosody, phonology, grammar, astrology, alchemy, and medicine, and developed an independent school of legal studies.