Known Nearly as Much by a Second Name as by the First

Pushpadanta is also recorded in Jain tradition under an alternative name, Suvidhinatha, with sources using the two more or less interchangeably for the same ninth Tirthankara, a detail that reflects the layered textual history behind these figures rather than any confusion about which individual is meant. Variant naming of this kind recurs across the earlier Tirthankaras and is generally explained by scholars as a byproduct of the tradition drawing on more than one line of textual transmission over a very long period, with different regional or sectarian streams settling on slightly different preferred names for the same cosmological figure before later compilers, most importantly Hemachandra in his twelfth century compendium of the tradition's major figures, brought the material together and preserved both names side by side rather than eliminating one.

As with the other Tirthankaras earlier than Parshvanatha and Mahavira, Pushpadanta's place in the vast cyclical chronology of Jain cosmology puts him outside the range historians can independently test, so questions about his story tend to concern how the tradition itself preserved and transmitted his name and emblem across centuries of compilation, rather than questions that could be resolved by external historical evidence.