This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Tirthankaras gathers all twenty four ford makers of Jainism's present cosmic age, the enlightened teachers who each rediscovered and taught the path to liberation, and together they form a complete and closed set rather than a sample of it.
Rishabhanatha, the first, belongs to a remote prehistoric antiquity in Jain sacred history; he is revered as the primordial teacher who taught humankind agriculture, crafts, writing, law and social order, and his son Bahubali is honored in the colossal monolith at Shravanabelagola. Parshvanatha, the twenty third, is the earliest Tirthankara generally accepted by historians as a real person, conventionally placed in the ninth to seventh centuries BCE; he taught a fourfold restraint of non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing and non-possession that Mahavira would later extend. Mahavira, the twenty fourth and last, is the central historical figure of Jainism, traditionally dated to the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, who reformed and carried forward Parshvanatha's community and whose teachings of non-onesidedness, non-possession and radical non-violence remain the foundation of Jain thought.
Mallinatha, the nineteenth, is the site of a real doctrinal divide within the tradition: the Svetambara hold Malli was a woman, the only female Tirthankara, while the Digambara maintain every Tirthankara was male. Across all twenty four, Jains venerate not gods or creators but perfected, liberated souls, each identified by an emblem and a place in an unbroken succession that closes with Mahavira and does not reopen.