This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
A language entry records a language specifically for its role in religious life, which scripture, liturgy or oral tradition it carries, which traditions use it and where, and whether it survives as an everyday spoken language, a liturgical language reserved for worship, or a language now studied mainly from written remains. The type exists because a tradition's relationship to its own sacred language is frequently as significant a fact about it as any doctrine the language expresses.
An entry records a language's family, since related languages often share liturgical vocabulary or a common script even where the traditions using them differ sharply, and its writing system, since many sacred texts are read today in a script distinct from any language's everyday alphabet. Where a language has become primarily or entirely liturgical, no longer anyone's native tongue, the entry says so plainly rather than implying an ordinary living language.
A single tradition can be recorded here as touching several languages at once, an original scriptural language, a language of later commentary, and the languages its scripture has since been translated into for everyday devotional use, since very few traditions have confined their religious life to just one language across their whole history, and the pattern of which language does which job within a tradition is itself worth recording.