Jain cosmology describes the current half cycle of time, the avasarpini, as a long descending arc in which conditions, and according to tradition the stature and lifespan of living beings including the Tirthankaras themselves, gradually diminish across the age. Shreyanasanatha, placed near the midpoint of the twenty four Tirthankara sequence, occupies a position tradition treats as transitional within that broader cosmological arc, with the sequence's later figures generally described in less expansive terms than the earliest ones as the age progresses toward its own decline. This structural framework, more than any independently attested biographical detail, is what situates Shreyanasanatha within Jain teaching, since as with the other Tirthankaras earlier than Parshvanatha and Mahavira, no evidence outside the tradition's own literature exists to corroborate a historical figure by this name and description.
Scholars of Jain cosmology tend to treat the descending cycle framework as a serious and internally coherent theological structure in its own right, worth understanding on its own terms as an account of how the tradition conceives of time and moral decline, rather than as a claim that needs to be, or even could be, checked against the kind of evidence used to establish an ordinary historical chronology.