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Concept
Somnath temple
Summary
The Somnath temple, also called Somanātha temple or Deo Patan, is a Hindu temple located in Prabhas Patan, Veraval in Gujarat, India. It is one of the most sacred pilgrimage sites for Hindus and is the first among the twelve jyotirlinga shrines of Shiva. It is unclear when the first version of the Somnath temple was built with estimates varying between the early centuries of the 1st-millennium to about the 9th-century CE. The temple is not mentioned in ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism as Somnath nomenclature but the "Prabhasa-Pattana" (Prabhas Patan) is mentioned as a tirtha (pilgrimage site), where this temple exists. For example, the Mahabharata in Chapters 109, 118 and 119 of the Book Three (Vana Parva), and Sections 10.45 and 10.78 of the Bhagavata Purana state Prabhasa to be a tirtha on the coastline of Saurashtra.
The temple was reconstructed several times in the past after repeated destruction by multiple Muslim invaders and rulers, notably starting from an attack by Mahmud Ghazni in the 11th century.
The Somnath temple was actively studied by colonial era historians and archaeologists in the 19th- and early 20th-century, when its ruins illustrated a historic Hindu temple in the process of being converted into an Islamic mosque. After India's independence, those ruins were demolished and the present Somnath temple was reconstructed in the Māru-Gurjara style of Hindu temple architecture. The contemporary Somnath temple's reconstruction was started under the orders of the first Deputy Prime Minister of India Vallabhbhai Patel after receiving approval for reconstruction from Mahatma Gandhi. The reconstruction was completed in May 1951 after his death.
The Somnath temple is located along the coastline in Prabhas Patan, Veraval, Saurashtra region of Gujarat. It is about southwest of Ahmedabad, south of Junagadh – another major archaeological and pilgrimage site in Gujarat. It is about southeast of the Veraval railway junction, about southeast of the Porbandar airport and about west of the Diu airport.
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