/lit/ - Literature

>>16085370
>There is no hard evidence that those people actually existed at that time
Pic related is dated to 700 BCE.

>or taught Jainism outside of the claims of the Jains themselves
"Parshvanatha is the earliest Jain tirthankara who is generally acknowledged as a historical figure.[5][6][7]" (Heehs 2002,
Jaini 2001, Zimmer 1853) all of them are scholars.

>but they don't have any texts of these alleged people which survived which have been dated by experts to being before the earliest Upanishads
Jain agamas have been lost to history just like Advaita commentaries prior to Gaudapada have been lost to history, however scholars don't date Jains based on text since by that logic Jainism started in the 11th century CE (which is absurd given the physical evidence).

>The Vedas predate Jainism, the Vedas just mention those peoples names but they don't describe them as teachers of Jainism and its doctrines like meditation etc. Their names in the Vedic literature which has countess names does not prove they were real teachers of Jainism, just as the occurrence of the name Kapila in some of the primary Upanishads is not necessarily a reference to the founder of Samkhya named Kapila, as Samkhya developed later after the Upanishads.
I mean they mention at least 3 tirthankaras by name, that isn't a coincidence. Also Samkhya isn't post-upanishad, proto-Samkhya was around the same time as the 2 earliest upanishads.