Disputed Statements

Tantra, Disciplines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period Start Year

Currently States 300

Historians of Indian religion date the earliest tantric material anywhere from the third to the seventh century of the common era, and no single date commands consensus. The range is wide because the earliest surviving manuscripts are centuries younger than the doctrines and practices they record, so scholars must argue from internal textual evidence, comparative ritual and doctrinal parallels, and scattered external references rather than from a securely dated original text. Scholars also disagree on where the definitional line falls between formative antecedent material, shared with earlier yogic and ascetic currents, and tantra proper as a distinct, identifiable movement, and that disagreement moves the boundary at both ends of the range.

Source The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions to the Thirteenth Century, Geoffrey Samuel tier 1

Tantra, Disciplines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period End Year

Currently States 700

Historians of Indian religion date the earliest tantric material anywhere from the third to the seventh century of the common era, and no single date commands consensus. The range is wide because the earliest surviving manuscripts are centuries younger than the doctrines and practices they record, so scholars must argue from internal textual evidence, comparative ritual and doctrinal parallels, and scattered external references rather than from a securely dated original text. Scholars also disagree on where the definitional line falls between formative antecedent material, shared with earlier yogic and ascetic currents, and tantra proper as a distinct, identifiable movement, and that disagreement moves the boundary at both ends of the range.

Source The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions to the Thirteenth Century, Geoffrey Samuel tier 1

Tanzania, Countries

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Legal Status

Currently States The union constitution guarantees freedom of religion with no state religion, but Zanzibar operates its own Kadhi courts for Muslim personal status and mainland proposals to create equivalent courts have been repeatedly contested.

Tanzania's union constitution, governing the union of mainland Tanganyika and the island of Zanzibar formed in 1964, guarantees freedom of religion with no state religion for the union as a whole. Zanzibar, which retains significant autonomy within the union including its own legal system, operates Kadhi courts, Islamic courts with jurisdiction over Muslim personal status matters, reflecting Zanzibar's overwhelmingly Muslim population, distinct from the mainland's more religiously mixed population. Proposals to create equivalent Kadhi courts on the mainland have been repeatedly raised and repeatedly contested, opposed by mainland Christian leaders and secular voices who argue that introducing religious courts into the mainland's otherwise uniform civil court system would compromise the union's secular character, while proponents argue mainland Muslims should have the same access Zanzibari Muslims already have. No mainland Kadhi courts proposal has secured the political support needed to become law as of the report.

Source International Religious Freedom Report, United States Department of State, Office of International Religious Freedom tier 1

Taoism Arrives In Taiwan With Fujian Settlers, Spread Events

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Start Year

Currently States 1660

The source states the influx of Fujian and Guangdong settlers began in the 1660s, a decade rather than a single year, and 1660 marks this event's atom for the decade's start; but the same source is explicit that there is little evidence the doctrinal, initiatory religion of Taoism itself, as against the folk worship of deities such as Mazu the settlers carried with them, was active in this early frontier period, since Taiwan held little draw for ordained Buddhist or Taoist religious leaders. Hoklo and Hakka Taoist masters transmitting institutional Taoism from Fujian and Guangdong are attested only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a reading the scholarly literature on Taiwanese Taoist ritual transmission (Kenneth Dean's study of Taoist ritual and popular cults in southeast China) corroborates. What is genuinely debated, then, is not which year in the 1660s settlers arrived, but whether "arrival" names the settlers' own folk practice at that date or the institutionally transmitted Taoism attested only two centuries later.

Source Taoism In Taiwan (Wikipedia), Wikipedia contributors tier 3

Tapas (Austerity), Virtues

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Dated for the Yoga Sutras themselves to between the second century BCE and the fourth or fifth century CE, though the word and concept are already present in Vedic literature many centuries earlier: an early dating follows the tradition's own attribution to a single ancient sage, while a late dating, argued by scholars such as Philipp Maas, reads the surviving text as a composite assembled together with its own earliest commentary.

The Yoga Sutras' date is disputed among scholars, from a single ancient author around the second century BCE to a later compilation as late as the fourth or fifth century CE; the debate turns on whether the text and its earliest surviving commentary were composed together or centuries apart.

Source The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary, Edwin F. Bryant tier 1

Tapas (Austerity), Virtues

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Attributed Author / Compiler

Currently States Traditionally attributed to Patanjali, the compiler of the Yoga Sutras; scholarship debates whether this is the same Patanjali credited with the Sanskrit grammatical treatise of that name.

Whether the Patanjali credited with the Yoga Sutras is the same figure credited with the Sanskrit grammatical treatise of that name, and whether the text as it stands is the work of one author or a later compilation, are both disputed.

Source The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary, Edwin F. Bryant tier 1

Tapas (Jain Asceticism), Disciplines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period Start Year

Currently States -599

Jain tradition dates the life of Mahavira, the tradition's last Tirthankara, to 599 to 527 BCE, but modern historians place him roughly a century later, nearer the fifth century BCE, so the exact founding period is not settled.

Source The Jains, Paul Dundas tier 1

Tara (Mahavidya), Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Scholarly Standing Detail

Currently States Most scholarship holds that the Hindu tantric Tara took her name and much of her iconographic form from Buddhist sources rather than the reverse, making her among the clearest documented cases of borrowing between the two tantric traditions, though the exact direction and mechanism of that borrowing, and whether it happened once or through repeated exchange, is still argued among specialists.

Source Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Mahavidyas, David R. Kinsley tier 1

Tara (Mahavidya), Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin of the Name

Currently States Most scholarship holds the Hindu Tara took her name and much of her form from Buddhist sources rather than the reverse, though the direction of borrowing is still argued.

Most scholarship holds that the Hindu Tara took her name and much of her form from Buddhist sources rather than the reverse, which makes her the clearest case of traffic between the two tantric traditions, though the direction of the borrowing is still argued by specialists.

Source Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition, David R. Kinsley tier 1

Tartarus, Realms

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin of the Name

Currently States The origin of the Greek name Tartaros is uncertain and may be pre-Greek, with no accepted derivation from known Indo-European roots.

Ancient sources make no attempt to explain the name, and modern philologists have proposed no derivation that has won general acceptance; many regard it, like several other early Greek place and underworld names, as likely inherited from a pre-Greek substrate language rather than coined from Greek roots.

Source Theogony, Hesiod tier 1

Tatta ਤ, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Sikh tradition credits Guru Angad, the second Guru, with giving the script its settled form in the sixteenth century

According To The Gurmukhi script

Two reference works give incompatible accounts. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism (Harbans Singh, editor-in-chief, Punjabi University, Patiala, 1998) carries the Sikh tradition that Guru Angad, the second Guru (1504-1552), devised the script. The World's Writing Systems (Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds., Oxford University Press, 1996), surveying the paleography of Indic scripts, holds instead that the letterforms were already in mercantile use in the Punjab as one of the Landa scripts descended from Sharada, and that comparing those existing Landa forms against the Gurmukhi letters attested from Guru Angad's era shows a fixing and standardising of a repertoire already in circulation rather than an invention from nothing. Neither side has displaced the other because the two accounts read different kinds of evidence, a community's own historical memory against a comparative script lineage, and the atlas records both without adjudicating.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, Harbans Singh (editor-in-chief) tier 2

Tatta ਤ, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Historians of Indic writing place the letterforms earlier, in the Landa mercantile hands already used across the Punjab

According To The Gurmukhi script

Two reference works give incompatible accounts. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism (Harbans Singh, editor-in-chief, Punjabi University, Patiala, 1998) carries the Sikh tradition that Guru Angad, the second Guru (1504-1552), devised the script. The World's Writing Systems (Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds., Oxford University Press, 1996), surveying the paleography of Indic scripts, holds instead that the letterforms were already in mercantile use in the Punjab as one of the Landa scripts descended from Sharada, and that comparing those existing Landa forms against the Gurmukhi letters attested from Guru Angad's era shows a fixing and standardising of a repertoire already in circulation rather than an invention from nothing. Neither side has displaced the other because the two accounts read different kinds of evidence, a community's own historical memory against a comparative script lineage, and the atlas records both without adjudicating.

Source The World's Writing Systems, Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.) tier 1

Tau ⲧ, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Greek letters wrote Egyptian from about the first century CE, settled by the fourth

According To The Coptic alphabet of Christian Egypt

The World's Writing Systems (Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds., Oxford University Press, 1996) surveys the small corpus of Old Coptic texts, pre-Christian magical and astrological papyri in which Egyptian was first written out using Greek letters plus a few signs borrowed from Demotic, against the standardised Coptic used in Christian scripture translation from around the third century CE onward. Comparing the two corpora, its contributors find the evidence thin enough to support two readings: that the Old Coptic magical texts already fixed the practice of writing Egyptian in Greek-based letters, or that the Christian translation project, needing a stable and teachable orthography for scripture, was the decisive act that standardised the script that survives. Because both readings draw on the same handful of surviving texts and no source describes an official act of decision, the volume treats the question as open rather than favouring either camp.

Source The World's Writing Systems, Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.) tier 1

Tav ת, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Scholem places Sefer Yetzirah between the second and sixth century CE

According To Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters

Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, New York, 1961) surveys the manuscript recensions of Sefer Yetzirah and finds no single stable text: the surviving copies diverge enough in wording and in the letter-to-planet and letter-to-sign correspondences that quoting "the text" requires naming which recension is meant. Comparing the linguistic style, the doctrinal content and the external references made to the work across centuries of citation, Scholem argues the book could have been composed anywhere from the second to the ninth century CE, a span of roughly a millennium, with later Kabbalistic and Hasidic writers each reading it through their own era's overlay. The atlas follows Scholem's range rather than a narrower guess, and does not print the per-letter planet and sign tables at all, because doing so would silently pick one contested recension over the others.

Source Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem tier 1

Tav ת, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Survives in three recensions that do not agree in detail

According To Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters

Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, New York, 1961) surveys the manuscript recensions of Sefer Yetzirah and finds no single stable text: the surviving copies diverge enough in wording and in the letter-to-planet and letter-to-sign correspondences that quoting "the text" requires naming which recension is meant. Comparing the linguistic style, the doctrinal content and the external references made to the work across centuries of citation, Scholem argues the book could have been composed anywhere from the second to the ninth century CE, a span of roughly a millennium, with later Kabbalistic and Hasidic writers each reading it through their own era's overlay. The atlas follows Scholem's range rather than a narrower guess, and does not print the per-letter planet and sign tables at all, because doing so would silently pick one contested recension over the others.

Source Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem tier 1

Tawe (Ta) ተ, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Meaning in the Attesting Source

Currently States Why the script was vocalised in the fourth century CE, after centuries of writing consonants alone, is argued and not settled

According To The Ge'ez script

The World's Writing Systems (Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds., Oxford University Press, 1996) reviews the Aksumite inscriptions that first show Ge'ez written with vocalisation, a fourth-century CE innovation that is not in dispute, and canvasses three explanations for why it happened then: an internal development inside the Aksumite royal chancery seeking a more precise script for administration; a response to the newly Christian court's need for scripture translated and taught with unambiguous vowels after Aksum's conversion under King Ezana; and influence carried by vocalised Indian scripts reaching the Aksumite court through Red Sea trade contact. Comparing the timing, the epigraphic evidence and the trade record for each explanation, the volume's contributors find none conclusive, since Aksum's fourth-century contacts touched all three at once; the dating of the change is settled, its cause is not.

Source The World's Writing Systems, Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.) tier 1

Tayt (Tha) ጠ, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Meaning in the Attesting Source

Currently States Why the script was vocalised in the fourth century CE, after centuries of writing consonants alone, is argued and not settled

According To The Ge'ez script

The World's Writing Systems (Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds., Oxford University Press, 1996) reviews the Aksumite inscriptions that first show Ge'ez written with vocalisation, a fourth-century CE innovation that is not in dispute, and canvasses three explanations for why it happened then: an internal development inside the Aksumite royal chancery seeking a more precise script for administration; a response to the newly Christian court's need for scripture translated and taught with unambiguous vowels after Aksum's conversion under King Ezana; and influence carried by vocalised Indian scripts reaching the Aksumite court through Red Sea trade contact. Comparing the timing, the epigraphic evidence and the trade record for each explanation, the volume's contributors find none conclusive, since Aksum's fourth-century contacts touched all three at once; the dating of the change is settled, its cause is not.

Source The World's Writing Systems, Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.) tier 1

Ta'ziyeh, Performance Works

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Year

Currently States 1501

The Safavid dynasty, under which ta'ziyeh performance began to thrive, was founded in 1501, but scholars disagree about when the fully staged dramatic form performed today actually consolidated, some dating that development to the late seventeenth century and others to the mid eighteenth.

Source Ta'zieh (Wikipedia), Wikipedia contributors tier 3

Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States Named for a century in settler accounts as a murderer, and recognised in later scholarship as a prophet and church founder

The Encyclopedia of Religion, second edition, Mircea Eliade founding editor, Lindsay Jones revising editor (Macmillan Reference, 2005), sets the 1868 Matawhero killings Te Kooti led against the documented circumstances that preceded them: his deportation to the Chatham Islands without trial and the subsequent four-year military pursuit of him across the North Island. The killings themselves are not disputed as historical fact; what is argued, and what New Zealand historiography has substantially revised since the 1970s as settler-colonial historical narratives have been re-examined against Maori accounts and the documented injustice of the deportation, is how the killings should be weighed against the unlawful deportation and pursuit that provoked them, a question of historical judgment rather than of disputed fact.

Source Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.) tier 1

Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 1832

The source marks this year circa, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

Source Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, Manatu Taonga, New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage tier 1