Within the Bhagavatī Sūtra, the spiritual landscape is shaped above all by the presence of Mahāvīra, the twenty‑fourth Tīrthankara. He stands as the central teacher, the axis around which the text’s explorations of doctrine, cosmology, karma, and ethics revolve. The work unfolds largely as a series of dialogues in which his insight is gradually disclosed, not in abstract proclamations alone, but through responses to concrete questions and situations. In this way, the text presents Mahāvīra not merely as a distant ideal, but as a living source of discernment whose words illuminate the structure of reality and the path of liberation.

The principal interlocutor in these dialogues is Gautama (Indrabhūti), Mahāvīra’s chief disciple and gaṇadhara. Through his questions and exchanges, the reader is drawn into the unfolding of subtle doctrinal points, as if invited to sit among the original assembly. Other close disciples also appear, such as Sudharman, whose presence in the narrative further anchors the transmission of teaching within a living community of seekers. Figures like Jambū Svāmī are remembered in this context as bearers of the omniscient lineage, evoking a sense of continuity in the Jain spiritual heritage.

Alongside these living dialogues, the text gestures toward the broader sweep of Jain sacred history by invoking earlier Tīrthankaras. Names such as Ṛṣabha (Ādinātha), Pārśva, and Nemi arise in cosmological and doctrinal discussions, where they serve to situate Mahāvīra’s teaching within vast cycles of time and prior revelations. These earlier Tīrthankaras do not function as active conversational partners in the same way as Mahāvīra and his disciples; rather, they appear as luminous reference points, marking epochs and lineages in the unfolding of the dharma. In this interplay of present discourse and remembered exemplars, the Bhagavatī Sūtra offers a vision of a tradition that is at once historically layered and spiritually immediate.