12 Jyotirlinga (Jothiramalingam) List: All Names, Places and States

Jothiramalingam is the Tamil rendering of Jyotirlinga. This piece gives the complete list of all twelve with their exact locations, states and associated rivers, explains where the list comes from, settles the two long-running disputes over Vaidyanath and Nageshwar, and separates the trivia from the details UPSC has actually asked in Prelims.

All 12 Jyotirlingas: the list

Jothiramalingam is the Tamil spelling of Jyotirlinga, so the twelve you are looking for are the Dwadasa Jyotirlingas. The accepted list is Somnath, Mallikarjuna, Mahakaleshwar, Omkareshwar, Kedarnath, Bhimashankar, Kashi Vishwanath, Trimbakeshwar, Vaidyanath, Nageshwar, Rameshwaram and Grishneshwar. Maharashtra holds three, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat two each, and one each falls in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

All twelve are inside India. That is worth stating plainly, because a lot of online lists quietly move one of them abroad.

#	Jyotirlinga	Place	State	Worth remembering
1	Somnath	Prabhas Patan, near Veraval	Gujarat	Sacked by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1026; rebuilt after 1947 on K. M. Munshi's initiative
2	Mallikarjuna	Srisailam, Nallamala hills	Andhra Pradesh	On the Krishna river; also counted among the Shakti Peethas
3	Mahakaleshwar	Ujjain, on the Shipra	Madhya Pradesh	The only south-facing (Dakshinamukhi) Jyotirlinga; famous Bhasma Aarti
4	Omkareshwar	Mandhata island, Khandwa district	Madhya Pradesh	Sits on an island in the Narmada
5	Kedarnath	Rudraprayag district, on the Mandakini	Uttarakhand	Highest of the twelve; also a Panch Kedar and Chota Char Dham site
6	Bhimashankar	Sahyadris, Pune district	Maharashtra	Near the source of the Bhima river; Nagara-style shrine
7	Kashi Vishwanath	Varanasi, on the Ganga	Uttar Pradesh	Demolished in 1669; rebuilt in 1780 by Ahilyabai Holkar
8	Trimbakeshwar	Near Nashik	Maharashtra	At the source of the Godavari; rebuilt by Nanasaheb Peshwa in the 1750s
9	Vaidyanath	Deoghar	Jharkhand	Contested with Parli Vaijnath in Beed, Maharashtra
10	Nageshwar	Near Dwarka	Gujarat	Contested with Aundha Nagnath (Maharashtra) and Jageshwar (Uttarakhand)
11	Rameshwaram (Ramanathaswamy)	Rameswaram island	Tamil Nadu	Southernmost; Dravidian, with one of the longest temple corridors in India
12	Grishneshwar	Verul, near the Ellora caves	Maharashtra	Smallest of the twelve; 18th-century Maratha rebuilding under Ahilyabai Holkar

Where the list actually comes from

Jyoti means light and linga is the aniconic form of Shiva, so a Jyotirlinga is a site where Shiva is held to have appeared as a column of light. The textual basis is the Kotirudra Samhita of the Shiva Purana. The list most people recite, though, comes from the Dwadasa Jyotirlinga Stotram, a twelve-line verse traditionally attributed to Adi Shankara, and its opening line is the reason the order is always Somnath first: Saurashtre Somanatham cha Srisaile Mallikarjunam.

Tradition also speaks of sixty-four Jyotirlingas, of which these twelve are the maha or principal ones. If you see a list of sixty-four somewhere and assume it is wrong, it is not; it is a different and older count.

The two the internet fights over

Two entries in the list have rival claimants, and no amount of searching will produce a clean answer, because both claims are old and both are locally believed.

Vaidyanath is the bigger one. Baba Baidyanath Dham at Deoghar in Jharkhand is the mainstream identification and the site of the Shravani Mela. But the Stotram's own line reads Paralyam Vaidyanatham, and Parli Vaijnath in Beed district, Maharashtra, rests its case on exactly that word. Nageshwar has three claimants: Dwarka in Gujarat, Aundha Nagnath in Hingoli district of Maharashtra, and Jageshwar in Almora, Uttarakhand.

For an exam, go with Deoghar and Dwarka. That is what standard sources and NCERT-adjacent material use, and UPSC does not set questions that hinge on a contested identification.

What UPSC has actually asked around these temples

Nobody has been asked to list the twelve Jyotirlingas. What gets asked is the layer underneath: which river a famous temple town sits on, which dynasty built in which style, and who rebuilt what in the eighteenth century.

The 2019 Prelims paper had a straight pairing question on famous places and rivers, with Pandharpur and Chandrabhaga among the pairs. That is the template. So the useful drill is not the temple name but the river beside it: Mahakaleshwar and the Shipra, Omkareshwar and the Narmada, Kashi Vishwanath and the Ganga, Kedarnath and the Mandakini, Trimbakeshwar at the Godavari's source, Bhimashankar at the Bhima's source, Mallikarjuna above the Krishna.

The second layer is patronage and rebuilding. Ahilyabai Holkar of Indore is behind both the 1780 Kashi Vishwanath temple and the rebuilt Grishneshwar, which is a fact worth holding because Maratha temple patronage shows up in Mains art and culture answers. Grishneshwar also sits at Verul, walking distance from Ellora, where the Kailasa temple was cut out of rock under the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I. Somnath gives you a clean modern-history thread too, from the 1026 raid to the post-independence reconstruction and the Somnath Trust.

A faster way to hold all twelve

Reciting the Stotram order works if you already know it. If you do not, group them geographically, because the map sticks better than the sequence and it also answers the state-wise questions in one go.

West coast pair in Gujarat: Somnath and Nageshwar, both in Saurashtra and Dwarka country.
Maharashtra trio: Bhimashankar, Trimbakeshwar, Grishneshwar. Two sit at river sources, one sits next to Ellora.
Madhya Pradesh pair: Mahakaleshwar on the Shipra, Omkareshwar on the Narmada.
North pair: Kedarnath in the Garhwal Himalaya, Kashi Vishwanath on the Ganga plain.
East single: Vaidyanath at Deoghar.
South pair: Mallikarjuna at Srisailam, Rameshwaram at the tip of the peninsula.

What to do with this

The list of twelve names is maybe twenty minutes of work. The part that earns marks is the second column of the table above, the rivers, the dynasties and the rebuilders, and that is the part most aspirants skip because the list itself feels like the answer.

So learn the twelve once, then spend your time on the temple town and its river, and on who built or rebuilt the structure. Static art and culture rewards exactly that kind of layered recall.

FAQs

1. Which state has the most Jyotirlingas?

Maharashtra, with three in the standard list: Bhimashankar, Trimbakeshwar and Grishneshwar. If the disputed claimants of Parli Vaijnath and Aundha Nagnath are counted, Maharashtra's tally rises to five.

2. Which Jyotirlinga is the highest and which is the southernmost?

Kedarnath in Uttarakhand is the highest, at roughly 3,580 metres in the Garhwal Himalaya, and it stays closed through the winter months. Rameshwaram in Tamil Nadu is the southernmost.

3. Why is Mahakaleshwar in Ujjain considered special among the twelve?

It is the only Jyotirlinga whose idol faces south, which is why it is called Dakshinamukhi. It is also the only one where the Bhasma Aarti, performed with sacred ash in the early morning, is a daily ritual.

4. Are the 12 Jyotirlingas the same as the Char Dham?

No, they are separate sets, though they overlap. Rameshwaram appears in both the twelve Jyotirlingas and Adi Shankara's four Char Dham, while Kedarnath is a Jyotirlinga as well as part of the Uttarakhand Chota Char Dham and the Panch Kedar circuit.

5. Is there any Jyotirlinga outside India?

No. All twelve are located within India, spread across eight states from Gujarat to Tamil Nadu.

6. Who composed the Dwadasa Jyotirlinga Stotram?

It is traditionally attributed to Adi Shankara, and each of its verses names the Jyotirlingas along with their region, which is why the standard order always begins with Somnath in Saurashtra.