Where the Arabian Sea meets the first Jyotirlinga — a temple rebuilt seventeen times and consecrated with the resolve of independent India
Somnath is the site of the first and most sacred of the twelve Jyotirlinga shrines of Shiva, standing where the Saraswati, Hiran, and Kapila rivers meet the Arabian Sea at the southwestern tip of Saurashtra peninsula in Gujarat. The current temple — rebuilt in the Chalukya architectural style after Indian independence and consecrated in 1951 — stands where a succession of temples have stood since antiquity, with the most infamous sacking carried out by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1024 CE, who reportedly filled sixty camel-loads with gold from the treasury. Beyond the great temple, Somnath also harbou…
Somnath holds a place of supreme reverence in Hinduism as the Prabhasa Kshetra where the Moon God (Soma) was said to have built the original temple in gold, rebuilt by the Sun God in silver, by Krishna in wood, and by humans in stone. The temple was famously sacked and looted seventeen times between 1024 and 1706 — most devastatingly by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1024, who broke the sacred linga and carried away wealth estimated at dozens of camel-loads of gold and silver. The post-independence restoration was driven by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who visited the ruins in November 1947 and declared th…