Thread by @rasu667

Somnath Jyotirlinga - The story of unbeatable resolve of the Dharmics in our Bhaarat.

Somnath Jyotirlinga gudi is situated in Prabhas Patan in Veraval municipality in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat. This is the 1st of the 12 Jyothirlingas.

Somnath kshetra is an ancient teerth sthal with references in Skanda purana, Srimad Bhagavad & Shiva Purana.
This place has been also called Bhaskar teertha, Prabhas teertha, aarka teertha, Soma teertha among other names during mahabharat time.

Acc to the purana, Chandra (Soma) married 27 daughters of Daksha Prajapati. Out of them he favoured Rohini and neglected the others. They complained to Daksha about Somas neglect & an angry Daksha cursed Soma that he would become diseased.
Soma begs forgiveness & asks Daksha to

remove the curse. Daksha says a curse by a Prajapati cannot be undone. Soma then goes to Brahma who advices him to go to Prabhasa kshetra and pray to Mahadev.
Soma does Shivalinga pratishta & does severe austerities to Mahadev for 6 months. Mahadev appears to Soma & advices him

to treat all his wives equally & says that he can remove part of the curse & not the whole curse. He also assures Soma that he would reside in the lingam there. Soma constructs the 1st temple with the help of Vishwakarma. Hence this kshetra was known as Somnath kshetra.

Attacks
In 1021 CE Muhammad Ghazni attacked & looted the riches of the temple and completely destroyed the temple & Shivalinga.
Later many Kings joined together & rebuilt the temple.

In 1298 CE Allauddin Khilji attacked and looted & destroyed the gudi & broke the shivalinga. It

was rebuilt by Hindu rulers.

Later it was destroyed again by Muhammad Tuglak. In 1377 it was rebuilt.

In 1396 it was destroyed again by muslims 2 times & rebuilt later.

In 1415 CE Ahmad Shah destroyed the temple again.

In 1547 CE a Portuguese governor destroyed the temple.

In 1665 CE Aurangazeb destroyed the existing temple.
In 1704 again he gave orders for destruction of the existing temple

In 1786 Rani Ahalyabai Holkar constructed a temple again. It stands till now and the shivalinga looks exactly like the shivalinga in the main temple.

The new Somnath temple was built on the place where a previous temple existed under the instructions of Sardar Patel post independence and Prana pratishta was done in 1951.

I have been to both the old and new Somnath mandirs. Many devotees do not know of the temple by Ahalyabai.

Though it is very near the New Somnath Mandir. In both the temples I felt the divine aura.

Shatkoti pranam to all the kings thru the years who rebuilt this mandir again & again inspite of the many destructions. 🙏🙏🙏