Meet the Sages Who Shaped Civilization

The traditions did not grow in sealed rooms. In these cities, in these years, teachers of different worlds walked the same streets — and sometimes argued the same questions face to face.

Even when they never shared a city, the traditions kept pace with one another. In the same years, on different shores, their teachers were at work — here is what was happening elsewhere.

1. c. 3200 BCE

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   As Uruk's scribes pressed the first proto-cuneiform into clay, Egyptians were independently shaping hieroglyphs along the Nile.

   In the temple-city of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia, scribes began pressing the first signs into clay — proto-cuneiform, among the earliest writing known anywhere, born to tally grain, livestock, and labor before it ever recorded a prayer or a story. This is the beginning of the written record itself. In these same centuries, far to the southwest, the Egyptians were independently developing hieroglyphs along the Nile, so that humanity learned to write in two river valleys at nearly the same hour of history.

2. c. 2560 BCE

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   While Old Kingdom Egypt raised King Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza, Sumer's scribes were refining cuneiform in southern Mesopotamia.

   On the Giza plateau, Old Kingdom Egypt completed the Great Pyramid of King Khufu — for nearly four thousand years the tallest structure on earth, raised by a skilled and organized workforce rather than by slaves. In these same centuries the city-states of Sumer in southern Mesopotamia flourished and warred, their scribes refining the cuneiform writing that would carry their hymns and laws. Two river valleys, the Nile and the Tigris-Euphrates, held the most powerful societies the world had yet seen. The pharaohs framed their monuments as guarantees of cosmic order and the king's passage to the gods.

3. c. 2334 BCE

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   As Sargon of Akkad forged the world's first empire in Mesopotamia, the Giza pyramids already stood above the Egyptian desert.

   Sargon of Akkad welded the city-states of Sumer and the lands beyond into the first empire the world had seen, ruling from a capital, Akkad, whose site is still lost. His Akkadian tongue spread across Mesopotamia alongside the older Sumerian, and his daughter Enheduanna, high priestess at Ur, composed hymns to the goddess Inanna — among the earliest poetry credited to a named author anywhere. Writing, only a few centuries old, had already become an instrument of empire and of devotion. In these same centuries, far up the Nile, the Old Kingdom of Egypt — the age of the Giza pyramids, already standing above the desert — was at the height of its early power.

4. c. 2100 BCE

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   Ur-Nammu set down the oldest surviving law code in Ur — the Ur of the Chaldees that Genesis remembers as Abraham's birthplace.

   In the revived Sumerian kingdom of the Third Dynasty of Ur, the law code attributed to King Ur-Nammu was set down — the oldest surviving law code known, fixing penalties in measured silver rather than blood, three centuries before Hammurabi. Ur was a thriving metropolis of brick temple-towers and ledgers in clay; it is also the city the Book of Genesis remembers as the birthplace of Abraham, “Ur of the Chaldees,” in the era Jewish tradition assigns to the patriarchs, though scripture preserves memory rather than dated chronicle. Law and covenant, in their different keys, were finding words.

5. c. 1792 BCE

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   While Hammurabi carved his laws in dark stone before the sun-god Shamash, Jewish tradition looks back to this era for the patriarchs.

   By the conventional Middle Chronology, Hammurabi came to the throne of Babylon and, near the end of his reign, had his laws carved on a tall stele of dark stone beneath an image of the king before the sun-god Shamash — nearly three hundred provisions opening with the promise to make justice shine in the land. This is the broad era to which Jewish tradition looks back for the patriarchs, well before any datable Israelite record. In Babylon the written word had become monument and statute, set in stone for a city to read.

6. c. 1350 BCE

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   While Akhenaten raised the Aten, the sun's disk, above Egypt's older gods, northern India's Ṛgveda hymns were carried by memory.

   In Egypt the pharaoh Akhenaten broke with tradition to elevate the Aten, the visible disk of the sun, above the older gods, building a new capital and composing a great hymn praising the sun as sole maker of all life — a sharp, short-lived experiment that scholars debate whether to call monotheism, and that did not outlast his death, when the old gods were restored. Across the Bronze Age world these were the years of great powers in contact and conflict: the Hittites, Mycenaean Greece, and Kassite Babylon exchanged letters and fought for the Levant. In northern India, in roughly this broad era, the hymns of the Ṛgveda were being composed and carried by memory. Distant traditions were each taking shape along their own rivers.

7. c. 1200 BCE

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   While Egypt's Ramesses III fought off the Sea Peoples, in northwest India the Ṛgveda's hymns were taking shape, carried by voice alone.

   Across the eastern Mediterranean and Near East, the Late Bronze Age was unraveling: Mycenaean Greece’s palace world collapsed, cities burned, and Mesopotamia’s Kassite Babylon and the Assyrian state weathered the turmoil as older kingdoms fell. In the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, in roughly these same generations, the hymns of the Ṛgveda were taking shape — Sanskrit verse to fire, dawn, and the gods, composed and memorized across perhaps 1500–1200 BCE and carried for centuries by voice alone before any pen. As one world of writing dimmed, another tradition was being woven in sound. In Egypt, the pharaoh Ramesses III fought off waves of displaced 'Sea Peoples,' and the New Kingdom survived but emerged weakened, its empire in the Levant fading.

8. c. 1000 BCE

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   While Jewish tradition places David and Solomon's kingdom in Jerusalem, India's later Vedic age was gathering its hymns and elaborating its rituals.

   As Mesopotamia recovered from the Bronze Age collapse — Aramaeans settling its margins and Assyria beginning the slow climb back toward power — Jewish tradition places in these years the united kingdom of David and Solomon in Jerusalem, on firmer historical ground than the patriarchal age though its scale is still debated by historians. In India this was the later Vedic age, when the hymns were being gathered and the rituals elaborated that the Upaniṣads would one day turn inward. Three river-worlds — the Tigris and Euphrates, the Jordan, and the rivers of northern India — were each entering a new chapter.

9. c. 668 BCE

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   As Ashurbanipal gathered his great library at Nineveh, the Hebrew prophets were raising their voices in Judah.

   Ashurbanipal took the throne of Assyria and gathered at Nineveh the great library whose tablets would one day give the modern world the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Babylonian Flood story. In these same generations the Hebrew prophets were raising their voices in Judah, the priestly schools of India were elaborating the Vedic sacrifice in the prose manuals called the Brāhmaṇas — the seedbed from which the Upaniṣads would grow — and in the Greek world the epics of Homer and the verse of Hesiod had only lately been composed. Across four lands, the foundational books of later traditions were being written down or sung into being.

10. 586 BCE

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    While Nebuchadnezzar II's Babylon destroyed Jerusalem's First Temple and exiled Judah, Thales reasoned about nature without myth on the coast of Asia Minor.

    Nebuchadnezzar II’s Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and its First Temple and carried Judah into the Babylonian Exile — the catastrophe that would reshape Jewish faith far from its land. In that very decade, on the coast of Asia Minor, Thales of Miletus was reasoning about the natural world without recourse to myth and was later credited with foreseeing the eclipse of 585 BCE, an opening of Greek philosophy; in India the earliest Upaniṣads pressed their inward search for the self behind all things; and somewhere to the east, the world into which the Buddha would be born — by tradition, within a generation or two — was already taking shape. From this hinge the recorded story turns toward the return from exile under Cyrus.

11. c. 530 BCE

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    As Judean exiles returned from Babylon to rebuild, the Buddha taught liberation across the Ganges plain while Pythagoras founded his school at Croton.

    As the Judean exiles returned from Babylon under Cyrus's decree of 538 BCE and began to rebuild, far to the east Siddhartha Gautama — the Buddha — was teaching the path to liberation across the Ganges plain, while in the Greek world Pythagoras had lately founded his school at Croton in southern Italy. In China, the young Confucius was coming of age in an era that would make him the teacher of the way of virtue and ritual.

12. c. 480 BCE

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    As the rebuilt Second Temple stood again in Jerusalem, the Buddha's first disciples carried his teaching through the kingdoms of northern India.

    As the rebuilt Second Temple stood again in Jerusalem and the returned exiles renewed Jewish life under Persian rule, the Buddha's first disciples carried his teaching through the kingdoms of northern India, and in Greece Parmenides argued that all change is illusion.

13. c. 445 BCE

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    As Nehemiah rebuilt Jerusalem's walls and Ezra read the Torah aloud, Socrates was a young Athenian beginning his life of questioning.

    As Nehemiah rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem and Ezra read the Torah aloud to the returned exiles, Socrates was a young Athenian, beginning the life of questioning that would make him the conscience of his city.

14. c. 250 BCE

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    As the Torah became the Greek Septuagint in Alexandria, Ashoka carved edicts of compassion across India and sent Buddhist missionaries toward Sri Lanka.

    As the Torah was first rendered into Greek as the Septuagint in Alexandria, the emperor Ashoka was carving edicts of compassion across India and sending Buddhist missionaries as far as Sri Lanka and the Hellenistic kingdoms. In Athens, Zeno of Citium taught Stoic philosophy in the painted colonnade — a generation after Euclid had laid down the foundations of geometry in that same Greek world. In Babylon, the priest Berossus had not long before set down his Babyloniaca (c. 281 BCE), his land’s history written in Greek, while Babylonian astronomers, still recording the sky in cuneiform, charted the heavens with remarkable precision.

15. c. 10 CE

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    As Hillel and Shammai led rival schools in Jerusalem, Augustus ruled Rome at peace and India's Bhagavad Gītā took its enduring shape.

    As Hillel and Shammai led their rival schools in Jerusalem, Rome's first emperor Augustus ruled a world at peace and the historian Livy was writing his sweeping history of Rome. In India, across these generations, the Bhagavad Gītā — set within the great epic of the Mahābhārata, still growing toward its vast final form — was taking the enduring shape it would hold for Hindu devotion ever after.

16. c. 30 CE

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    As Jesus of Nazareth taught in Galilee and Jerusalem under Pontius Pilate, Tiberius ruled Rome from his retreat on Capri.

    As Jesus of Nazareth taught and gathered his disciples in the Galilee and Jerusalem under the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate, the emperor Tiberius ruled the Roman world from his retreat on Capri, and Philo of Alexandria was weaving the Torah together with Greek philosophy. In Jerusalem the schools of Hillel and Shammai shaped the Jewish law, while far to the east Buddhism spread north through Gandhara toward the trade routes of Central Asia.

17. c. 40 CE

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    As Philo led a Jewish embassy to the emperor Caligula, Seneca was a rising senator in Rome and Paul began his ministry.

    As Philo of Alexandria fused the Torah with Greek philosophy and led a Jewish embassy to the emperor Caligula, the Stoic philosopher Seneca was a rising senator and orator in Rome — soon to be exiled — and the apostle Paul, newly converted, was beginning the ministry that would carry the message of Jesus across the Mediterranean world.

18. c. 67 CE

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    By tradition, Emperor Ming founded China's first Buddhist temple at Luoyang as Paul wrote his letters across the Roman Mediterranean.

    In the decade the Second Temple would fall, tradition holds that Emperor Ming of Han welcomed two Indian monks to Luoyang and founded the White Horse Temple, the first Buddhist temple in China. In the same years the apostle Paul was writing his letters across the Roman Mediterranean, and the rabbis of Jerusalem faced the gathering Roman war.

19. c. 90 CE

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    As Yochanan ben Zakkai rebuilt Judaism around the academy at Yavneh, the Gospels were taking their written form.

    A generation after the Temple's fall, as Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai and Rabban Gamliel II rebuilt Judaism around the academy at Yavneh, the Gospels were taking written form and the Jewish historian Josephus was at work in Rome on his Antiquities, which he completed in 94 CE.

20. c. 180 CE

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    While Rabbi Judah the Prince shaped the Mishnah in Galilee, Marcus Aurelius wrote his Stoic Meditations on campaign.

    As the teachings that would become the Mishnah took shape in the academies of the Galilee under Rabbi Judah the Prince, the emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote his Stoic Meditations on campaign and the physician Galen practiced in Rome. In southern India the philosopher Nagarjuna was unfolding the Madhyamaka 'middle way' of emptiness, while in Gaul the bishop Irenaeus of Lyons defended the emerging Christian creed.

21. c. 415 CE

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    While the sages of the Galilee completed the Jerusalem Talmud, Kumarajiva rendered the Mahayana sutras into Chinese at Chang'an.

    As the sages of the Galilee completed the Jerusalem Talmud and those of Babylonia laid the groundwork for the Babylonian, Augustine wrote in North Africa and Jerome had recently finished the Latin Bible at Bethlehem. In the same generation Kumarajiva had rendered the Mahayana sutras into Chinese at Chang'an, and Buddhaghosa would soon compose the Visuddhimagga, the great manual of Theravada practice, in Sri Lanka.

22. c. 525 CE

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    As Babylonia's sages shaped the Talmud, Boethius wrote The Consolation of Philosophy awaiting execution in Italy.

    As the sages of Babylonia gave the Talmud its enduring shape, Boethius wrote The Consolation of Philosophy awaiting execution in Italy and the emperor-to-be Justinian prepared to codify Roman law at Constantinople. By tradition the monk Bodhidharma was carrying the seeds of Chan — later Zen — meditation into China in these same years.

23. c. 650 CE

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    As Uthman's caliphate gathered the Qur'an into one standard text, Xuanzang led his great sutra-translation effort at Chang'an.

    A generation after Muhammad's death in 632, the Qur'an was being gathered into a single standard text under the caliph Uthman, and the new faith spread out of Arabia. In these same years the Chinese monk Xuanzang, freshly returned from his sixteen-year pilgrimage to India (629–645) with hundreds of sutras, led a great translation effort at Chang'an, while Maximus the Confessor refined Christian theology in the Byzantine world.

24. c. 700

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    While Ādi Śaṅkara traveled India consolidating Advaita Vedānta, Hasan al-Basri was shaping early Islamic piety in the new Muslim world.

    As the philosopher Ādi Śaṅkara traveled the length of India consolidating Advaita Vedānta — the teaching that the deepest Self and ultimate reality are one — and is remembered for founding monastic seats from Sringeri to the Himalayas, the early hadith masters such as Hasan al-Basri (d. 728) shaped piety in the new Islamic world. In Damascus John of Damascus would soon systematize Christian doctrine, and in distant Northumbria the monk Bede gathered the learning of the Latin Church, while the Chinese pilgrim-translator Yijing, lately returned from India, rendered Buddhist scriptures at the Tang capital.

25. c. 780

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    While the Geonim of Sura and Pumbedita led world Jewry from Baghdad, Padmasambhava helped found Samye, Tibet's first monastery.

    As the Geonim of Sura and Pumbedita led world Jewry from Abbasid Baghdad, the Indian master Padmasambhava helped found Samye, Tibet's first monastery, inaugurated in 779. In the same age Baghdad's translators were beginning to render Greek learning into Arabic, while in the West Charlemagne was forging a Christian empire among the Franks.

26. c. 925

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    As Saadia Gaon rendered the Bible into Arabic in Abbasid Babylonia, al-Farabi expounded Plato and Aristotle from Baghdad.

    As Saadia Gaon, soon to lead the academy of Sura in Abbasid Babylonia, rendered the Bible into Arabic and brought philosophy into Jewish thought, the philosopher al-Farabi expounded Plato and Aristotle for the Islamic world from Baghdad, and the Sufi al-Hallaj had lately been executed (922) for his ecstatic sayings. In Kashmir the philosopher Utpaladeva was unfolding the Pratyabhijñā ('recognition') theology of non-dual Śaiva thought, while across Asia Buddhism still flourished in Tang-era China in the years before the great persecution of 845.

27. c. 1040

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    As Avicenna left his mark on Persia and Atisha carried Buddhism toward Tibet, the child who would become Rashi was born in Troyes.

    As Ibn Sina (Avicenna) — who had completed his vast medical and philosophical works before his death in 1037 — left his mark on Persia, the young poet-philosopher Solomon ibn Gabirol was rising in Muslim Spain, and the Indian master Atisha prepared the mission that would carry a renewed Buddhism into Tibet, arriving in 1042. In these same years the scholar al-Biruni, who had spent years in northern India, had recently completed his 'Kitab al-Hind' (c. 1030), Islam's first searching study of Hindu philosophy, religion and science. And the child who would become Rashi had just been born in Troyes.

28. c. 1090

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    As Rashi composed his commentaries in Troyes, al-Ghazali taught in Baghdad in the years before his crisis of faith.

    As Rashi composed his commentaries in Troyes and the Spanish-Jewish poet Judah Halevi came of age, al-Ghazali taught in Baghdad in the years before his crisis of faith reshaped Islamic thought. The Christian world had split East from West in the Great Schism of 1054, and the First Crusade was about to set out.

29. c. 1190

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    As Maimonides finished the Guide for the Perplexed in Egypt, the monk Honen founded Pure Land Buddhism in Japan.

    As Maimonides completed the Guide for the Perplexed in Egypt and the mystic Ibn Arabi rose in Muslim Spain, the monk Honen had founded Pure Land Buddhism in Japan with its call upon the name of Amida Buddha. In southern India the poet-reformer Basava led the VīraŚaiva (Lingayat) devotional movement, whose Kannada vacanas rejected caste and ritual in favor of direct devotion to Śiva. In Europe the first universities were forming at Paris and Bologna, where Aristotle — preserved and transmitted through Arabic — was reshaping Christian theology.

30. c. 1250

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    While Rumi composed ecstatic Persian poetry in Konya, the young Thomas Aquinas studied under Albert the Great in Paris.

    As Nachmanides taught in Spain and would soon defend Judaism at the Disputation of Barcelona (1263), Rumi composed his ecstatic Persian poetry in Konya after meeting the wandering Shams. In Japan, Dogen was establishing Soto Zen, and in Paris the young Thomas Aquinas was studying under Albert the Great, beginning the work of weaving Aristotle into Christian thought.

31. c. 1290

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    As the Zohar began to circulate in Castile, the boy-saint Jñāneśvar composed the Jñāneśvarī (1290), opening the Gītā to everyday Marathi.

    As the Zohar began to circulate in Castile, opening a new era of Kabbalah, the Persian poet Saadi's verses were already beloved across the Muslim world and the Sufi orders spread under the Mongol peace. In western India the boy-saint Jñāneśvar composed the Jñāneśvarī (1290), a luminous Marathi commentary on the Bhagavad Gītā that opened scripture to the common tongue and seeded the Varkari devotional movement. In Italy, Dante was a young man whose Divine Comedy would crown the medieval Christian imagination.

32. c. 1400

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    As Tsongkhapa reformed Tibetan Buddhism, Kabbalists in Spain deepened their study of the Zohar while the Renaissance dawned in Florence.

    As Tsongkhapa reformed Tibetan Buddhism — soon founding the Gelug school whose lineage would produce the Dalai Lamas — Kabbalists in Spain deepened the study of the Zohar in the uneasy decades before the expulsion. In southern India the Vijayanagara Empire rose as a great Hindu patron of temples and Sanskrit learning, its ministers guided by the Advaita teacher Vidyāraṇya of Sringeri (d. 1391). In Europe the Renaissance was dawning in Florence while the Church was riven by competing popes.

33. c. 1565

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    As Joseph Karo published the Shulchan Aruch, the Hindu empire of Vijayanagara fell at the battle of Talikota.

    As Joseph Karo published the Shulchan Aruch (1565) and Moses Cordovero unfolded new depths of Kabbalah in Safed — where Isaac Luria would soon arrive — the Catholic Church concluded its reforming Council of Trent (1563) and the Geneva of John Calvin remade Protestant Europe. In the Deccan the great Hindu empire of Vijayanagara fell at the battle of Talikota (1565), even as Krishna-bhakti poured through northern India in the songs of the devotional poets. Far to the east the Mughal emperor Akbar was building a court that would become famed for debate among Muslims, Hindus, Christians and Jews.

34. c. 1650

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    As Safed's kabbalist tradition spread through Europe and the Ottoman world, the Fifth Dalai Lama unified Tibet and began building Lhasa's Potala Palace.

    As the kabbalist tradition of Safed spread through Europe and the Ottoman world, the Fifth Dalai Lama unified Tibet and began building the Potala Palace in Lhasa (from 1645). In Europe Descartes and the new science were remaking Christian philosophy in these same years.

35. c. 1657

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    As the Mughal prince Dārā Shikoh rendered fifty Upaniṣads into Persian, Spinoza in Amsterdam began to set reason against received religion.

    As the kabbalists of the Ottoman and European worlds carried forward the legacy of Safed, the Mughal prince Dārā Shikoh completed in 1657 his Persian translation of fifty Upaniṣads, the 'Sirr-i-Akbar' ('The Greatest Secret'), seeking a shared mystical ground between Islam and Hinduism — a rendering that would one day carry the Upaniṣads to Europe. In these same years Rembrandt painted in Amsterdam, where the young philosopher Baruch Spinoza was beginning the inquiries that would set reason against received religion, and in Tibet the Fifth Dalai Lama governed from the rising Potala.

36. c. 1740

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    As the Baal Shem Tov gathered the first Hasidic circles in the Carpathians, Jonathan Edwards helped ignite the Great Awakening in colonial America.

    As the Baal Shem Tov gathered the first Hasidic circles in the Carpathians and the young Vilna Gaon mastered the whole of Torah in Lithuania, the preacher Jonathan Edwards helped ignite the Great Awakening in colonial America. In Japan the Zen master Hakuin was reviving Rinzai practice with his koans and vivid ink paintings.

37. c. 1810

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    As Hasidic dynasties multiplied across Eastern Europe, the young Rammohan Roy was laying the ground for his Atmiya Sabha in Bengal.

    As Hasidic dynasties multiplied across Eastern Europe and the disciples of the Vilna Gaon built the great Lithuanian yeshivot, the movement of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1792) had reshaped Arabia and Sufi brotherhoods spread across Africa. In Bengal the young Rammohan Roy — already arguing in his writings for a reasoned, monotheistic reform of Hinduism — was laying the ground for the discussion circle (the Atmiya Sabha, 1814) and the Brahmo Samaj (1828) he would later found. In Europe the Romantic age was stirring new currents in Christian thought.

38. 1893

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    As Mussar and Hasidic courts flourished in Eastern Europe, Swami Vivekananda greeted Chicago's 1893 Parliament of Religions: “Sisters and brothers of America.”

    As the Mussar movement and the great Hasidic courts flourished in Eastern Europe, the Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda electrified the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago on 11 September 1893 with his greeting 'Sisters and brothers of America,' carrying a modern, reform-minded Vedanta to the West, while the Sri Lankan reformer Anagarika Dharmapala addressed the same gathering and opened the West to Buddhism. In the same era Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad Abduh called for an Islamic awakening, Abduh from Cairo, while Christian thinkers wrestled with Darwin and modern biblical criticism.

39. c. 1935

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    As Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook taught in Jerusalem, D.T. Suzuki was introducing Zen to a Western audience.

    As Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook taught in Jerusalem and Joseph B. Soloveitchik began his teaching career in America, D.T. Suzuki was introducing Zen to a Western audience and the Tibetan teachers were as yet unknown beyond the Himalayas. In India the silent sage Ramana Maharshi drew seekers to the hill of Arunachala and Sri Aurobindo pursued his integral yoga at Pondicherry, while Mahatma Gandhi made the Bhagavad Gītā a guide for nonviolent life. In Germany Karl Barth and the young Dietrich Bonhoeffer reshaped Protestant theology under gathering shadows, while the poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal and the scholar Said Nursi gave voice to the modern Muslim world.

One timeline for every tradition — see who was teaching, in Athens or Jerusalem, Baghdad or Banaras, in any age of the story.