Nageshwar is celebrated in the Puranas as the manifestation of Shiva in the sacred forest of Darukavana, where he delivered his devotee Supriya and granted divine fearlessness. Three revered pilgrimage centers preserve this sacred legacy as the tenth Jyotirlinga: the coastal Nageshwar temple near Dwarka in Gujarat (where the lingam is sheltered by a multi-hooded divine serpent), the ancient Hemadpanthi temple of Aundha Nagnath in Maharashtra (sanctified by Saint Namdev), and the serene 124-temple Himalayan cluster of Jageshwar Dham in Uttarakhand (nestled in ancient deodar cedar groves). Each sanctuary reflects the eternal promise of Shiva as the dispeller of poison and fear.

Claims, and where they come from

• A shrine called Nagesha is one of the twelve jyotirlingas, tenth in the order this set follows. — Shiva Purana — Koti Rudra Samhita, ch. 1 — the dvadasha-jyotirlinga list
• The recited list places this shrine in the Daruka forest — Darukavana — and names no town, district or region. That wording is what leaves the identification open: it locates the shrine in a forest whose location no surviving text settles. — Dvādaśa Jyotirliṅga Stotra (traditionally attributed to Śaṅkarācārya) — The half-line naming this shrine in the Daruka forest. The attribution to Śaṅkarācārya is traditional. No transliterated fragment is quoted here: the wording could not be checked against an edition in this session, and on the one site where the exact words are the whole argument a half-remembered quotation would be worse than none
• A demon called Daruka and his consort held a forest and preyed on those who passed through it; among those they imprisoned was a merchant and Shiva-devotee named Supriya, who kept worshipping a lingam in captivity and taught the other prisoners to do the same. Shiva appeared, destroyed the demons, and remained at the place as Nagesha. — Shiva Purana — The Nagesha account. Retellings differ over how the forest came to be the demons' — one strand has the consort granted it by the goddess, and has her move the forest into the sea when attacked — over what became of her, and over how the deliverance happened, so no single version is asserted here and the samhita is deliberately not pinned. Note what this story does NOT contain: any claimant temple, any district, any coastline
• Marathi regional tradition counts the Nagnath temple at Aundha, in Hingoli district, as this jyotirlinga, and the shrine has been worshipped under that identification in continuous practice. — Regional tradition in Maharashtra — Practice and regional tradition, not a verse. A local tradition also attributes the temple's building to figures from the epic period; no date or builder is asserted here because none could be verified for this file
• The Nageshwar temple between Dwarka and Bet Dwarka in Gujarat is widely identified as this jyotirlinga in modern pilgrimage practice. — Modern pilgrimage practice in Saurashtra — Practice, not a verse. How widely a shrine is visited or listed today is a fact about present-day pilgrimage, not evidence about which shrine the stotra means; it is recorded so the reader is not surprised by it, never as a point in this claimant's favour
• The Jageshwar claim in Kumaon rests on reading Darukavana as the forest of deodar — daru is wood, devadaru the deodar — which is the forest Jageshwar's temple group stands in. — Etymological argument advanced for the Jageshwar identification — An argument made from the words, recorded as an argument. The reading of daru/devadaru is ordinary Sanskrit; that the Darukavana of the stotra is THIS deodar grove is the contested step, and nothing in this file settles it
• The shrine's name is read as nagesha, lord of the nagas or serpents, and that reading is used in support of more than one claimant — including the Nagnath name at Aundha. — Etymological argument, advanced by more than one claimant — Recorded as argument, not as a finding. A name shared between a text and a temple is evidence of naming, not of identity — which is exactly the step every one of these three claims has to make
• A colossal modern seated Shiva statue stands beside the temple at the Dwarka-area site. — Modern construction (twentieth/twenty-first century) — Modern record, not scripture and not evidence for the identification. No height or date is given because none could be verified for this file
• No one of the three claimant temples is asserted by this corpus as the shrine the texts name. — Editorial position of this corpus — Stated in the record rather than left implicit. Ten of the twelve are listed here as accepted; this one is not, and the reason is that the evidence available does not settle it. See `identification.claims`

Counted among

• The Twelve Jyotirlingas — Twelve sacred sanctuaries where Shiva manifested not merely as an image, but as an eternal, unbounded pillar of cosmic light.

Questions to explore

• The verse puts this shrine in the Daruka forest and stops there. Is there anything at all that can locate that forest, or is the name the whole of the evidence?
• Three temples in three states have each been worshipped as the tenth jyotirlinga for generations. Does a shrine stop being one if someone else's claim turns out to be older?
• Ten of the twelve are agreed and two are not. Is that because the evidence is worse for these two, or because more people wanted them?