Follow the history.

Many paths, shared roots.

Follow the story for a 17-chapter introduction with a map that follows each chapter. Expand a school introduction for context, or switch to Timeline to use the timeline and individual markers. In free exploration, start with Essentials for major turning points. More detail adds schools and philosophical ideas. Full detail adds textual landmarks, reform movements and historical caveats.

Dates often mark a representative moment within a longer development. Some locations represent a region or network, rather than a precise birthplace. Curved lines show selected relationships—not literal travel routes or exhaustive genealogies.

In free exploration, solid lines indicate transmission or development; dashed lines indicate broader influence, context or reinterpretation. In the guided story, moving dashed lines highlight selected connections for that chapter; they do not connect each chapter to the next as a single travel itinerary. Color groups are guides: Vajrayāna belongs within the wider Mahāyāna world, and “Modern & global” is not a single school.

This is a curated introduction, with major gaps: Himalayan local traditions, Vietnam, island Southeast Asia and many modern communities deserve fuller treatment. A marker remaining visible does not mean a school remained active there.

Reading & map credits

Land outlines: Natural Earth, public domain. Map styling and historical selection created for this atlas. Event cards link to introductory sources for further reading; approximate dates should not be treated as scholarly consensus on a single founding year.