Open Questions

Open Gurmukhi

Why It Is Open Sikh tradition credits Guru Angad with the script, while historians of Indic writing hold that the letterforms were already in mercantile use in the Landa hands. Both accounts are argued from the same thin evidence, and the atlas records the disagreement rather than settling it. What neither account establishes for this pass is whether the specific ordering of the thirty-five, including the placement of Sassa and Haha ahead of the five series, predates the Gurus or was fixed by them.

What Would Settle It Dated Landa or proto-Gurmukhi material with an explicit letter sequence, whether a scribal exercise, an account book heading or an inscription, from before the middle of the sixteenth century. A published palaeographic study of the ordering itself, as distinct from the letterforms, would also close it.

Expertise Needed Indic palaeography and the history of writing in the Punjab

Question posed in The World's Writing Systems, Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.).

Open Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra

Why It Is Open The tradition attributes the text to the Vedic-age sage Parashara, but no surviving manuscript is reliably datable earlier than the medieval period, and the text shows internal evidence of compilation over time rather than single authorship.

What Would Settle It A critical, manuscript-stemma edition comparing the major recensions, dating their strata by internal astronomical references and cross-checking against securely dated citing texts such as the Phaladeepika.

Expertise Needed Indology / history of science (Sanskrit textual criticism)

Question posed in Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, Sage Parashara (attributed).

Open Vedanga Jyotisha

Why It Is Open No independent record of Lagadha survives outside the text's own attribution. Nothing about his identity, period, or historical existence can be checked against any other source, which is a gap rather than a live scholarly disagreement: no camp holds a documented rival candidate.

What Would Settle It A securely dated independent reference to Lagadha in another Vedic-era or classical Indian text, or manuscript evidence tying a specific historical figure to the Vedanga Jyotisha's composition.

Expertise Needed Indology / history of Vedic literature

Question posed in The Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha, in its Rigveda and Yajurveda Recensions, Translated and critically edited by T. S. Kuppanna Sastry.

Open Soma

Why It Is Open At least three serious candidates have been argued at length and none is established. Wasson proposed Amanita muscaria in 1968; Flattery and Schwartz proposed Peganum harmala in 1989; ephedra is favoured on the grounds that it is the plant used in the living Zoroastrian Yasna, a ritual with no recorded break. Each fits some of the textual evidence and fails on other parts of it.

What Would Settle It A securely dated archaeobotanical find from an Indo-Iranian ritual context with residue analysis, or a philological argument that settles the disputed Rig Veda passages. A fourth possibility deserves testing: that the hymns are liturgical praise rather than pharmacological description, in which case a mild plant is sufficient and the search for a potent one is misconceived.

Expertise Needed Indology, Iranian and Avestan philology, archaeobotany, ethnobotany

Question posed in Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality, R. Gordon Wasson.

Open Parshvanatha

Why It Is Open Critical scholarship accepts Parshvanatha and Mahavira as historical figures. Jain tradition holds all twenty four to be historical teachers. For the remaining twenty two there is no independent attestation, so a single answer applied across the group would misdescribe most of it in one direction or the other.

What Would Settle It Independent attestation for any individual Tirthankara beyond the two, whether inscriptional, textual from outside the tradition, or archaeological.

Expertise Needed Indology, Jain studies, and South Asian archaeology.

Question posed in The Jains, Paul Dundas, Second edition, page 19.

Open Amarnath Cave

Why It Is Open The cave is named in the Nilamata Purana and in Kalhana's Rajatarangini, but neither text's date of composition is settled, so their references cannot fix how far back the site's veneration actually runs.

What Would Settle It A codicological or paleographic dating study of the manuscript traditions of the Nilamata Purana and the Rajatarangini, or an independently dated inscription or record naming the cave before the nineteenth century.

Expertise Needed Indology, manuscript studies, Sanskrit philology

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Denise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.).

Open Chitrasutra of the Vishnudharmottara Purana

Why It Is Open The date is commonly given as the fifth to seventh centuries and is not the difficulty. The region is: the Chitrasutra is the earliest surviving Indian treatise on painting, so where it was written bears directly on which surviving wall paintings its rules were written for or against, and the atlas records the region as not established rather than assigning one.

What Would Settle It A regional attribution argued from the text itself, from its language, its named places, its ritual assumptions or its relationship to a datable local recension, rather than inferred backward from whichever painting tradition a reader wishes to connect it to.

Expertise Needed Indology, Sanskrit textual criticism, history of Indian art

Question posed in Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.

Open Manasara

Why It Is Open Scholarly estimates for the date spread across the middle centuries of the first millennium CE, and the region of composition is not established either. The text is the most comprehensive surviving shilpa shastra treatise, so the answer would anchor the dating of the tradition around it, and at present the atlas can only record the spread.

What Would Settle It A dated inscription or a dated building whose plan, proportions or terminology can be matched to the Manasara's prescriptions specifically rather than to the shared vocabulary of the shilpa shastras. A critical edition establishing the relationship between the recensions would narrow the region.

Expertise Needed Indology, Sanskrit textual criticism, temple archaeology and epigraphy

Question posed in Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.

Open Indus Valley

Why It Is Open The Indus script that labels these seals has never been deciphered, so the horned seated figure on seal M-304 and its kin cannot be read against a text that would say who or what it depicts. The proto-Shiva reading popularized in early twentieth century scholarship rests on visual resemblance to later Hindu iconography (the seated posture, the horns, the surrounding animals), not on any legible caption, and Srinivasan's own iconological re-assessment finds the identification unsupported by the seal's own details.

What Would Settle It A decipherment of the Indus script that survives scholarly scrutiny, or an independently datable bilingual inscription pairing Indus signs with a known language, would let the seals be read on their own terms rather than through later Vedic or Hindu iconography projected backward onto them.

Expertise Needed Indus Valley archaeology, epigraphy and comparative iconography

Question posed in The So-Called Proto-Siva Seal from Mohenjo-Daro: An Iconological Assessment, Doris Meth Srinivasan.

Open The Sovereign Military Order of Malta

Why It Is Open A 1.5 billion euro annual budget figure circulates in press coverage of the Order with no cited source or methodology. As a sovereign entity the Order is not subject to any national financial regulator, and no public consolidated financial statement was located.

What Would Settle It A published consolidated financial statement from the Order itself, for example through its Receiver of the Common Treasure, or independent reporting that traces the 1.5 billion euro figure to a primary source.

Expertise Needed International sovereignty studies and nonprofit or humanitarian-sector financial journalism.

Question posed in Sovereign Military Order of Malta, Distinct From Malta Itself, Assists Worlds Poor, Larry Luxner.

Open The Gospel of Jesus's Wife Fragment

Why It Is Open Karen King had custody of the fragment for study and testing between 2011 and roughly 2016. Ariel Sabar's reporting identified Walter Fritz as the owner and documented that the fragment was returned to him, but no institution or individual has publicly confirmed holding it since, and this atlas has found no subsequent public accounting of its physical location as of this entry.

What Would Settle It A public statement from Walter Fritz, Karen King, Harvard, or another named custodian confirming current possession, or the fragment surfacing again in scholarly, journalistic, or auction records.

Expertise Needed Investigative journalism, Coptic studies, manuscript provenance research

Question posed in Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man and the Gospel of Jesus's Wife, Ariel Sabar.

Open Avestan A 𐬀

Why It Is Open The script is placed in Sasanian Iran with reasonable confidence and its purpose is not in doubt, but no source names the person or the body that designed it. This is not a case of scholars holding rival candidates; there are no candidates. The work was begun and left without a conclusion.

What Would Settle It A Sasanian or early post-Sasanian text, a colophon in an early manuscript, or an inscription that names the deviser or the commissioning authority. Failing that, a comparative study of the earliest surviving Avestan hands against dated Pahlavi material, which might at least narrow the milieu.

Expertise Needed Iranian philology and Zoroastrian manuscript studies

Question posed in The World's Writing Systems, Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.).

Open Vishtaspa

Why It Is Open Nothing outside Zoroastrian tradition attests him. The traditional dating, which places Zarathustra 258 years before Alexander, appears to derive from an ancient confusion between this Vishtaspa and Hystaspes the father of Darius I, who is a different and later man. Linguistic dating of the Gathas places their composition many centuries earlier, in the second or very early first millennium BCE, somewhere in eastern Iran or Central Asia, which leaves the patron with no fixed place, date or external record.

What Would Settle It An epigraphic, archival or archaeological find naming Vishtaspa in a datable eastern Iranian or Central Asian context, or a decisive advance in the absolute dating of Old Avestan.

Expertise Needed Iranian philology; Central Asian archaeology; Avestan studies

Question posed in Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.

Open Al-Azhar

Why It Is Open Al-Azhar's waqf endowments were nationalized into Egypt's Ministry of Awqaf in 1952; the Ministry administers the national waqf estate as a whole and no source found in this pass isolates Al-Azhar's own share of it, so no current valuation of Al-Azhar's institutional wealth can be attested.

What Would Settle It A Ministry of Awqaf or Egyptian government disclosure, or an independent scholarly study of Egypt's waqf sector, that breaks out Al-Azhar's own endowment holdings from the national total.

Expertise Needed Islamic economics / Egyptian public administration

Question posed in Al-Azhar Mosque (Wikipedia), Article body, history section, on the 1952 nationalization of Al-Azhar's waqfs.

Open Kuwait Awqaf Public Foundation

Why It Is Open Kuwait Awqaf Public Foundation's own website could not be reached directly to check for a published financial statement, and the only relayed figures found, from a Malaysia-based aggregator citing an outside institute's report, could not be corroborated against the institute's own report or any other independently reachable source.

What Would Settle It Direct access to Kuwait Awqaf Public Foundation's own published financial statements or annual report, or a corroborated relay of the International Institute of Islamic Waqf's Strategic Waqf Report readable by this axis's tooling.

Expertise Needed Islamic endowment (waqf) economics and Gulf public-sector financial disclosure practice.

Question posed in Kuwait Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs (Wikipedia).

Open Aqidah al-Tahawiyya

Why It Is Open Abu Ja'far al-Tahawi's own lifetime, 853 to 933, is well established, but no source pins the creed's actual composition to a specific year or even a decade within it.

What Would Settle It A securely dated manuscript, a contemporary reference to the work's composition, or a philological study anchoring its text to a particular stage of al-Tahawi's career.

Expertise Needed Islamic intellectual history

Question posed in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.).

Open Ibn Mujahid

Why It Is Open The modern study of Ibn Mujahid's selection of the seven readers works from his writing and its later citation; it does not supply his own birth or death year, and no other catalogued source does either.

What Would Settle It A biographical dictionary entry from the classical Islamic biographical literature giving his dates, checked against the Kitab al-Sab'a's own internal dating to the early fourth century AH.

Expertise Needed Islamic intellectual history, Arabic biographical literature

Question posed in Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.

Open The Fatwa Against Salman Rushdie

Why It Is Open The Iranian government stated in September 1998 that it had no intention of threatening the author's life and would not encourage anyone to do so. It did not describe that as a revocation. Iranian clerical bodies and the foundation that offered a reward have held that a ruling of this kind cannot be withdrawn after the death of the jurist who issued it, and the reward has been publicly reaffirmed since. The two positions are held by different institutions in the same state and neither has been withdrawn.

What Would Settle It A published juristic analysis, from within the school concerned, of whether a ruling of this kind survives its issuer and what act would be required to end it. A clear statement from the authority claiming successor jurisdiction would settle the practical half.

Expertise Needed Islamic jurisprudence, Twelver Shia; contemporary Iranian legal and political history

Question posed in From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and Its Legacy, Kenan Malik.

Open The Mardin Fatwa of Ibn Taymiyya

Why It Is Open Ibn Taymiyya's own lifetime, 1263 to 1328, and Mongol rule over Mardin are both well documented, but no source pins the fatwa itself to a specific year within that span.

What Would Settle It A securely dated manuscript of the fatwa, or a documented occasion, such as a specific delegation from Mardin, that the text can be tied to.

Expertise Needed Islamic legal history

Question posed in Ibn Taymiyya (Makers of the Muslim World), Jon Hoover.

Open Raphael

Why It Is Open Until 2026-07-30 the site tagged Raphael as an Islamic archangel on the strength of a shared name alone, not through evidence. That tag was not carried across when religion membership for archangels was later reviewed: the Islamic identification runs through Israfil, and the atlas holds nothing establishing that the two figures are one and the same. Raphael's own name-origin properties tie him to the Book of Tobit and note his absence from the Hebrew Bible. Recording the identification would have been a guess, so it was left out and the question written down instead.

What Would Settle It A survey of classical Islamic angelology, hadith collections and tafsir establishing whether Israfil is identified with Raphael inside the tradition itself rather than only in later comparative writing, together with the earliest datable text that makes the equation. A positive finding is one recorded link between Raphael and Islam, with that source attached. A negative finding closes this question as withdrawn.

Expertise Needed Islamic studies, comparative angelology, history of religions

Question posed in Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.