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Utagawa Kuniyoshi  · Public domain

Lineages

Four kinds of succession, kept apart.

A tradition branching, a teaching passed on, an office held in turn and a family are four different relationships — and they are never drawn as one.

  • 178 traditions with branches
  • 1,215 teachers and students
  • 186 offices with holders
  • 298 houses with members
Browse the lines One person, four lines

A teacher is not a parent.
A poem is not a pedigree.

Every line says what it is

Four relationships, four colours.

Each kind has its own colour, its own mark and its own section, wherever it appears.

An example from the records

Interwoven, not identical.

One person can stand in every kind of line at once. Here is Alexander the Great, drawn from the records' own statements: each line keeps its own mode, its own colour and its own words, and none is read as another.

Alexandros IV of Macedon appears twice: named in the records as succeeding Alexander the Great as pharaoh, and recorded as a child of Alexander the Great. Two statements, in two modes; the page never draws one as the reason for the other.

How the kinds are kept apart
Alexander the Great 20 July 356 BCE – 10 June 323 BCE

Each line reads from Alexander the Great down.

  1. Tradition Affiliation

  2. Teacher Transmission

  3. Office Succession in office

  4. House Family

Browse the lines

One kind at a time, each in its own colour: the tabs never show two kinds as one.

Affiliation

Many paths. Shared histories.

Traditions with branches recorded under them, most-branched first.

What this means

Association with a tradition or school. Traditions branch, overlap and re-merge; this is not a clean single-origin tree.

178 traditions in this collection have branches recorded under them. Branching is association, not descent, and being listed under a tradition is not being recognised by it.

Show 12 more

All traditions in the directory

Transmission

Teachers and students

The thinnest data on the site: where this is short, the record is — not the tradition.

What this means

Teaching passed from one person to another. Not biological ancestry and not automatic institutional succession.

Transmission is the backbone of most living traditions — isnād in Islam, the rabbinic chain, Buddhist teacher-to-student lineage, Sufi silsila — and it is barely present in structured data. That is written in each collection’s known gaps rather than left for a reader to infer from a thin page.

1,215 figures here have a recorded teacher or student, most widely linked first.

All figures in the directory

Succession in office

Who held it next?

Offices held in sequence — not a family genealogy. Open one for its ladder of holders.

What this means

Who held an office after whom. Not parentage, not discipleship, and not universally recognised — offices are contested.

186 offices here have holders recorded: lines first, then offices whose tenures overlap throughout — held by many at once, or claimed side by side — most holders first within each. The faces are the most recent holders with a picture.

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All offices in the directory

Family

Houses and dynasties

Families, drawn as families. Their religious context is a separate claim, on each house’s page.

What this means

A documented human family relationship. Not a succession mechanism, and not religious transmission.

298 houses here have members recorded, largest first. Membership of a house is not a religious affiliation, and a dynasty’s affiliation is never its population’s.

Show 12 more

All houses in the directory

Copy of Bryaxis · Public domain

Keep going

Every profile keeps them apart too.

A figure's family, teachers and offices are separate sections on their page, each with what it does not imply — and the connections between traditions are drawn with their own cautions.

See the connections How the kinds are kept apart

Four kinds of line,
never one tree.