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Gautama Akshapada, Jaimini and Kanada, the names Indian tradition gives to the founders of the Nyaya, Purva Mimamsa and Vaisheshika schools, each carry three facts marked debated in this atlas, nine facts in all. Read closely against their own values rather than counted as nine arguments, they reduce to three findings, one per founder, and the findings are not even the same kind.

Two Founders, One Fixed Text

For Jaimini and Kanada, the historicity, historicity detail and lifespan facts all restate a single shape: the person's own dates are fixed by no external record, while the founding text itself can be dated by an independent method. The Mimamsa Sutra, attributed to Jaimini, is placed on textual grounds between the fourth and second century BCE, a dating of the text rather than of the man tradition names as its author. The Vaisheshika Sutra, attributed to Kanada, is dated more precisely still: a critical edition built from manuscripts discovered after 1950 places its finished form between roughly 200 BCE and the start of the Common Era. Both men remain undated. Both of their texts do not.

The Founder Whose Text Will Not Hold Still Either

Gautama Akshapada's three facts look identical to the other two at first pass, but they are not. The Nyaya Sutra itself shows signs of accretion, later commentators adding to an original core, so its own composition cannot be pinned to a single date the way the Mimamsa and Vaisheshika texts can. Scholarly proposals for his own lifetime still range across nearly a thousand years, the fifth century BCE to the early centuries of the Common Era, with no consensus, but here the uncertainty runs two levels deep: neither the man nor the book that carries his name has a settled date. Nine facts read one at a time would suggest nine open arguments. Read against their own values, they are three findings, and only two of the three share a shape.

Where To Read More

• Gautama AkshapadaSagesGautama Akshapada, founder of Nyaya, whose text resists a single date as much as the man does
• JaiminiSagesJaimini, founder of Purva Mimamsa, whose text the Mimamsa Sutra carries its own independent date
• KanadaSagesKanada, founder of Vaisheshika, whose text the Vaisheshika Sutra carries a date fixed by a post 1950 critical edition