SSC
The Somnath Jyotirlinga temple is located in which state?
Answer (Detailed Solution Below)View answer ▾Hide ▴
Answer: Option B — Gujarat
Detailed Solution
The Somnath temple is located at Prabhas Patan, near Veraval, in the Gir Somnath district of Gujarat, on the shore of the Arabian Sea. It is considered the first of the twelve Jyotirlingas, the most sacred shrines of Lord Shiva, where Shiva is believed to have appeared as a column of light.
The name "Somnath" means "Lord of the Moon" (Soma). According to legend, the Moon God built the first temple here to worship Shiva, who freed him from a curse.
Somnath has a long and dramatic history. Because of its wealth, it was attacked and destroyed several times:
In 1025-26 CE, Mahmud of Ghazni raided the temple and carried away huge treasures. This is the most famous attack.
It was rebuilt by local rulers, such as the Solanki king Bhima I and Kumarapala, and was attacked again by Alauddin Khalji's army in 1299 and later by other rulers. It was destroyed again during Aurangzeb's reign.
In 1783, Queen Ahilyabai Holkar of Indore built a separate temple nearby, which still stands.
After Independence, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, then Deputy Prime Minister, took a pledge in November 1947 to rebuild the temple. The reconstruction was supervised by K.M. Munshi. The present temple, built in the Chalukya (Maru-Gurjara) style, was inaugurated by President Dr Rajendra Prasad on 11 May 1951, when the Jyotirlinga was installed.
The twelve Jyotirlingas include: Somnath (Gujarat), Mallikarjuna (Srisailam, Andhra Pradesh), Mahakaleshwar (Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh), Omkareshwar (Madhya Pradesh), Kedarnath (Uttarakhand), Bhimashankar (Maharashtra), Kashi Vishwanath (Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh), Trimbakeshwar (Maharashtra), Vaidyanath (Deoghar, Jharkhand), Nageshwar (Dwarka, Gujarat), Rameshwaram (Tamil Nadu) and Grishneshwar (near Ellora, Maharashtra).
Why not the other options?
- ✗Maharashtra has three Jyotirlingas: Bhimashankar, Trimbakeshwar and Grishneshwar.
- ✗Madhya Pradesh has Mahakaleshwar and Omkareshwar.
- ✗Uttarakhand has Kedarnath.
Quick tip
Remember: Somnath = first Jyotirlinga, Prabhas Patan (Gujarat), raided by Mahmud of Ghazni (1025), rebuilt by Sardar Patel's initiative, inaugurated by Rajendra Prasad (1951).
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Monuments & Religious Places — Preparation
This question tests your understanding of Monuments & Religious Places, a key topic in the General Knowledge section. The detailed solution above uses a step-by-step approach to show the reasoning, and where available, a shortcut that helps you solve similar questions in under 90 seconds during the actual exam.
This topic covers India's important monuments, temples, mosques, churches, gurudwaras and pilgrimage sites, who built them and when, their architectural styles, and India's UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Questions ask who built a monument, where it is located, or which dynasty or style it belongs to. For example, the Qutub Minar was begun by Qutbuddin Aibak, and the Sun Temple at Konark was built by the Eastern Ganga king Narasimhadeva I. Revise the UNESCO World Heritage Sites as a list, noting the most recent additions. Practise the monuments and religious places questions below, written in the style of the general awareness sections of exams such as SSC, banking, railways, CUET GAT, MAH CET and CLAT. Each question comes with a detailed explanation that adds related facts, so every question helps you revise more than one point.