Somnath Temple

Prime Minister will inaugurate the Ram temple in Ayodhya, 73 years ago; the President of India inaugurated another temple in a grand ceremony.

• Located in - Prabhas Patan, Veraval, in Gujarat.

• Significance - It is the holy place of the first Aadi Jyotirling Shree Somnath Mahadev, among the twelve Jyotirlinga shrines of Shiva.
• It is also the place where Lord Shri Krishna took his last journey.
• Built by - In 1782, Maratha queen Ahalyabai Holkar built a small temple at the site.
• Other names - The Somnath temple, also called Soman?tha temple or Deo Patan.

The temple faced several attacks from raiders, with the most damaging by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1026 CE.

• Under Mughals - In the sixteenth century, Akbar permitted the worship of the linga in the Somanatha temple and appointed desais /officers to administer it.
• Three generations after Akbar, Aurangzeb gave orders for its destruction.
• He subsequently issued an order for its destruction and its conversion into a mosque in 1706 just before he died.
• After Independence - Those ruins were demolished and the present Somnath temple was reconstructed in the Maru-Gurjara style of Hindu temple architecture.

The contemporary Somnath temple's reconstruction was started under the orders of the first Home Minister of India Vallabhbhai Patel and completed in May 1951 after his death.

Maru-Gurjara Style

• It is also known as Sola?ki style is the style of West Indian temple architecture.
• The style originated in Gujarat and Rajasthan from the 11th to 13th centuries, under the Chaulukya dynasty.
• The Chaulukya dynasty is also called the Sola?ki dynasty.
• Although originating as a regional style in Hindu temple architecture, it became especially popular in Jain temples, and mainly under Jain patronage later spread across India.