Somnath is named first wherever the twelve are listed, and it sits at the western edge of the set, on the Arabian Sea at Prabhas Patan in Gujarat. Its name comes from the shrine's own founding story: Soma, the Moon, is said to have worshipped here and recovered what a curse had taken from him. The temple standing today is modern — consecrated in 1951 — because the site has been sacked and rebuilt repeatedly across a thousand years, and pilgrims have come back to the same shore each time. That persistence, rather than any surviving ancient fabric, is what the place is known for.

Claims, and where they come from

• Somnath is the first of the twelve jyotirlingas. — Shiva Purana — Koti Rudra Samhita, ch. 1 — the dvadasha-jyotirlinga list, which opens at Saurashtra
• Chandra (Soma) married the twenty-seven daughters of Daksha but favoured Rohini; cursed by Daksha to waste away, he worshipped Shiva at Prabhasa and was released to wane and wax rather than to vanish — hence Somnath, the lord Soma took as his own. — Shiva Purana — Koti Rudra Samhita — the Someshvara account
• The temple standing on the site today was consecrated on 11 May 1951; its predecessors were destroyed and rebuilt several times. — Shree Somnath Trust (temple record) — Recorded by the trust that administers the shrine, not a scriptural claim

Counted among

• The Twelve Jyotirlingas — Twelve places where Shiva is worshipped not as an image but as a pillar of light with no beginning and no end.

Questions to explore

• The temple has been destroyed and rebuilt more than any other shrine in the set. Does the tradition treat the rebuilding as part of what makes it holy, or as something that happened to it?
• Somnath's story explains why the moon waxes and wanes. How much of the shrine's importance rests on that account, and how much on its place at the head of the list?
• Nothing of the older temples survives in the building that stands today. What does it mean for a place to be the same tirtha when none of its fabric is?