Kaśyapa
c. 1400 BCE · Srinagar
Legendary primordial seer and progenitor figure; no historical dates exist. The ~1400 BCE convention ties him loosely to the Vedic stratum, though Puranic tradition treats him as a cosmic ancestor of gods, demons and all creatures. The date is conventional and the figure is mythic.
Kaśyapa is one of the most prominent legendary seers, counted among the Saptarṣi (the seven great sages) and remembered as a Rigvedic seer associated with the Soma hymns of the ninth Maṇḍala. In the Purāṇas he is treated as a cosmic progenitor (often titled Prajāpati): as husband of Aditi and Diti — daughters of Dakṣa — he is described as the forefather of gods (devas, through Aditi), demons (asuras, through Diti), nāgas (through Kadru), humans and animals. The region of Kashmir is traditionally said to derive its name from him — explained as "Kaśyapa-mīra," the lake of the sage Kaśyapa, or "Kaśyapa-meru," the mountain of Kaśyapa — linked to a legend (recorded in the Nīlamata Purāṇa) that the Kashmir valley was once a lake, Satīsar, drained through his ascetic power. He is a figure of myth and scripture, not documented history; the textual accounts about him are inconsistent and largely allegorical, and any date attached to him is notional rather than historical.
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Srinagar
We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Kaśyapa’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
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