Figures a tradition itself names as the one who began it, or who gave it the form it still holds. The claim is rarely simple. Jainism counts Mahavira as the last of twenty-four Tirthankaras rather than the first teacher, and Buddhism names Buddhas before Gautama, so this shelf records who a tradition points to and how it qualifies the pointing.
Facts
Overview
What Defines This GroupingFigures a tradition names as the origin of its teaching. Not every tradition has one, and where one is named the role differs, teacher, prophet, manifestation, so the heading does not name a single kind of person. 2 What Defines This GroupingJainism rejects the description. Mahavira is presented not as a founder but as the twenty-fourth Tirthankara of the present half-cycle, restating a teaching held to have no beginning. 3Tradition: Jainism Learn More
The Founders
This group holds founders, the figures at the origin of a religion, order or tradition, whose life and teaching set it in motion. Founders occupy a special place, remembered as the source from which a whole community traces itself.
The browser will find the founding figures the atlas classes here. The entries describe each within their tradition, and where a founder is also worshipped as a deity or revered as a saint the atlas notes that their story is told from more than one angle across its pages.
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Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005The classification of religious figuresView the Source 3. The Jains
Paul Dundas, Routledge, 2002Mahavira and the historical foundation of JainismView the Source Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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