12 Jyotirlinga List with States, Rivers and Locations

A clean list of the 12 Jyotirlingas with their exact locations, states and rivers, the scriptural source of the list, the three disputed sites (Nageshwar, Vaidyanath, Parli), and the specific way UPSC frames temple questions in Prelims.

The 12 Jyotirlingas, with exact locations

The twelve are Somnath (Gujarat), Mallikarjuna (Andhra Pradesh), Mahakaleshwar (Madhya Pradesh), Omkareshwar (Madhya Pradesh), Kedarnath (Uttarakhand), Bhimashankar (Maharashtra), Kashi Vishwanath (Uttar Pradesh), Trimbakeshwar (Maharashtra), Vaidyanath (Jharkhand), Nageshwar (Gujarat), Rameshwaram (Tamil Nadu) and Grishneshwar (Maharashtra). By the standard list, Maharashtra has three, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh have two each, and the rest have one apiece. The table below adds the river, the town and the one detail that usually shows up in an exam or a quiz.

#	Jyotirlinga	Place	State	Detail worth remembering
1	Somnath	Prabhas Patan, near Veraval	Gujarat	Called the Aadi (first) Jyotirlinga; present temple rebuilt after 1947, completed 1951
2	Mallikarjuna	Srisailam, Nallamala hills, on the Krishna	Andhra Pradesh	Rare site that is both a Jyotirlinga and a Shakti Peetha (Bhramaramba)
3	Mahakaleshwar	Ujjain, on the Shipra	Madhya Pradesh	The only south-facing (dakshinamukhi) Jyotirlinga; Bhasma Aarti; Mahakal Lok corridor opened 2022
4	Omkareshwar	Mandhata island in the Narmada, Khandwa district	Madhya Pradesh	Island shrine; the island is said to resemble the Om symbol
5	Kedarnath	Rudraprayag district, on the Mandakini	Uttarakhand	Highest of the twelve; part of Chota Char Dham and Panch Kedar
6	Bhimashankar	Sahyadri range, Pune district	Maharashtra	Near the source of the Bhima river; Nagara-style temple with Maratha-era work
7	Kashi Vishwanath	Varanasi, on the Ganga	Uttar Pradesh	Rebuilt by Ahilyabai Holkar in 1780; Vishwanath Dham corridor opened December 2021
8	Trimbakeshwar	Near Nashik, Brahmagiri hill	Maharashtra	At the source of the Godavari; the stotram calls it Gautami-tate
9	Vaidyanath	Deoghar (Baidyanath Dham)	Jharkhand	Shravani Mela; Parli in Maharashtra claims the same identity
10	Nageshwar	Near Dwarka (Darukavanam)	Gujarat	Giant open-air Shiva statue; rival claims from Hingoli and Almora
11	Rameshwaram	Ramanathaswamy temple, Setu region	Tamil Nadu	Dravida style; one of the longest temple corridors in India
12	Grishneshwar	Verul, near Ellora, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar district	Maharashtra	Smallest of the twelve; rebuilt by Ahilyabai Holkar; next to the Ellora caves

Where the list actually comes from

The twelve are drawn from the Kotirudra Samhita of the Shiva Mahapuranam, where Shiva is described as manifesting as a pillar of light. Jyoti means light, linga means mark or sign, so a Jyotirlinga is a site where that self-manifest light is believed to have appeared. Tradition speaks of sixty-four such manifestations, of which twelve are treated as the maha or principal ones.

The list most people recite comes from the Dwadasa Jyotirlinga Stotram, traditionally attributed to Adi Shankaracharya. It is a geographic memory device as much as a prayer. Saurashtra for Somnath, Srisaila for Mallikarjuna, Ujjayini for Mahakala, the Himalaya for Kedara, Setubandha for Ramesha, and so on. Learn the stotram order once and you never have to reconstruct the list from scratch.

The three locations people get wrong

Most confusion online is not about the names. It is about which town holds which lingam, and three cases cause almost all of it.

Nageshwar is the first. The commonly accepted site is near Dwarka in Gujarat, identified with Darukavanam. But Aundha Nagnath in Hingoli district, Maharashtra, and Jageshwar near Almora in Uttarakhand both carry old claims to the same status.

Vaidyanath is the second. Baidyanath Dham at Deoghar in Jharkhand is the popular answer and the one that draws millions during Shravan. Some versions of the stotram read Parli or Paralya, which supports Parli Vaijnath in Beed district, Maharashtra. Both temples are genuinely revered; the dispute is textual, not devotional.

The third is less a dispute than a slip. Grishneshwar is often written as being at Ellora, which is close enough for a pilgrimage but not exact. It stands at Verul village, walking distance from the Ellora caves, and the two are separate monuments with separate histories. The Kailasa temple at Ellora is a Rashtrakuta rock-cut excavation associated with Krishna I; Grishneshwar as it stands today is largely an eighteenth-century Maratha reconstruction.

What UPSC does with this list

UPSC has never asked you to name all twelve. That is the mistake in how most aspirants store this information: they memorise the list as a list and leave it stranded.

The question comes sideways. A pairing set on temples and states. A question on rivers where the temple is the clue rather than the answer, as with Trimbakeshwar and the Godavari, or Bhimashankar and the Bhima. A statement on architectural style, since Rameshwaram is Dravida while Bhimashankar and Grishneshwar carry Nagara and Maratha features. A question on patronage, where Ahilyabai Holkar links Kashi Vishwanath, Grishneshwar and the earlier Somnath structure into one thread. And occasionally a current-affairs hook, because the Kashi Vishwanath Dham corridor of December 2021 and Ujjain's Mahakal Lok of October 2022 both sit on this map.

So store the twelve in four columns, not one: name, state, river or physical setting, and one distinctive fact. Then test yourself against the way UPSC has historically framed temple and architecture questions rather than re-reading the list, which is exactly the shift the PYQ Mastery Course is built around.

The list takes ten minutes to learn. Knowing why UPSC would bother asking about it is the part that survives to the exam hall.

Group by state first: Maharashtra 3, Gujarat 2, Madhya Pradesh 2, one each in UP, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu.
Attach a river or setting to each: Shipra, Narmada, Ganga, Godavari, Mandakini, Krishna, Bhima, sea coast.
Keep the three contested sites (Nageshwar, Vaidyanath, and the Verul-Ellora distinction) as a separate note so they do not corrupt the main list.
Revise it twice in a year, not twelve times in a week.

FAQs

1. Which is the first Jyotirlinga?

Somnath at Prabhas Patan in Gujarat is traditionally counted as the first and is called the Aadi Jyotirlinga. It appears first in the Dwadasa Jyotirlinga Stotram as Saurashtre Somanatham.

2. Which state has the most Jyotirlingas?

Maharashtra, with three in the standard list: Bhimashankar, Trimbakeshwar and Grishneshwar. If the contested claims of Parli Vaijnath and Aundha Nagnath are counted, the number rises to five, which is why some sources say Maharashtra has five.

3. Which Jyotirlinga is south-facing?

Mahakaleshwar at Ujjain is the only one where the lingam faces south, which is why it is called dakshinamukhi. It is also the only Jyotirlinga where the Bhasma Aarti is performed, in the early hours of the morning.

4. Is there any site that is both a Jyotirlinga and a Shakti Peetha?

Srisailam in Andhra Pradesh, where Mallikarjuna is the Jyotirlinga and Bhramaramba Devi is the Shakti Peetha in the same complex. Varanasi and Ujjain are also associated with Shakti Peetha traditions, but Srisailam is the cleanest single-complex example.

5. Are Jyotirlingas and the Char Dham the same thing?

No. The Char Dham circuit is Badrinath, Dwarka, Puri and Rameswaram, and only Rameswaram overlaps with the Jyotirlinga list. Kedarnath belongs to the Uttarakhand Chota Char Dham, which is a different and more recent circuit.

6. In what order should the 12 Jyotirlingas be visited?

There is no religiously prescribed order, and pilgrims usually travel by geography rather than by the stotram sequence. A common route clubs the western group (Somnath, Nageshwar, Trimbakeshwar, Bhimashankar, Grishneshwar), then the central group (Mahakaleshwar, Omkareshwar), then Varanasi and Deoghar, with Kedarnath in the summer months and Srisailam and Rameswaram in the south.