This page groups figures by the year their life is said to have begun. Wikipedia notes that "questions of historicity frequently arise in relation to historical studies of religion," since a birth year for an ancient figure is often an estimate rather than a fixed record. Browsing by lifespan start year lets a visitor compare how far back one figure's own life reaches against another's.
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.
12th century
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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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