Nageshwar Jyotirlinga Temple

Nageshwar, one of the twelve Jyotirlingas of Shiva, stands near Dwarka on Gujarat’s Saurashtra coast, identified by local and popular tradition with the mythical Darukavana (“forest of Daruka”) described in the Shiva Purana. According to that legend, the demon Daruka imprisoned a devout merchant named Supriya in an undersea city; when Supriya and his fellow prisoners continued chanting “Om Namah Shivaya” even in captivity, Shiva appeared, destroyed Daruka, and took the form of the Nageshwar linga at the demon’s request that he remain there to protect devotees. The temple grounds are marked today by a large modern statue of Shiva seated in meditation.

Unlike some of the other Jyotirlingas covered in this directory, no reliable date or patron dynasty could be confirmed for the present temple’s construction, so its built history is left unstated here rather than guessed. It is also worth noting, in the interest of completeness, that Nageshwar’s location is not free of dispute: temples at Jageshwar in Uttarakhand and Aundha Nagnath in Maharashtra are also regionally venerated as the authentic Nageshwar Jyotirlinga, a pattern of competing claims found among several of the twelve sites. This entry follows the widely popular identification of the Dwarka-area shrine as Nageshwar without asserting it is the only legitimate one.