Critical scholarship accepts Parshvanatha and Mahavira as historical figures. Jain tradition holds all twenty four to be historical teachers. For the remaining twenty two there is no independent attestation, so a single answer applied across the group would misdescribe most of it in one direction or the other.
What would resolve this Independent attestation for any individual Tirthankara beyond the two, whether inscriptional, textual from outside the tradition, or archaeological.
Resolution Sourcing note, 2026-07-25 (W4). Cited to Dundas 2002, Source 583, second edition, page 19, where the text reads that the historicity of Mahavira and his predecessor Parsva alone of all the fordmakers is not in question. Read in the Internet Archive full text of the Routledge second edition; the running heads confirm the page.
OpenIndology, Jain studies, and South Asian archaeology.Paul Dundas, The Jains