Jyothirlingalu Places List: All 12 Jyotirlingas With States

A complete list of the 12 Jyotirlinga places with their towns, districts, states and nearest railheads, the three sites where tradition disagrees on the location, why Srisailam is the only Jyotirlinga in the Telugu-speaking region, and the specific facts UPSC tends to test.

The 12 Jyotirlinga places, in the traditional order

The twelve Jyotirlingas stand at Somnath in Gujarat, Srisailam in Andhra Pradesh, Ujjain and Omkareshwar in Madhya Pradesh, Kedarnath in Uttarakhand, Bhimashankar and Trimbakeshwar and Verul in Maharashtra, Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, Deoghar in Jharkhand, Dwarka in Gujarat, and Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu. That is eight states in all. The order below is the one fixed by the Dwadasa Jyotirlinga Stotram, which is how the list is chanted and how it is usually asked.

Note the pattern. Almost every site sits on a river, a coast or a mountain, and several mark the source of a river: the Bhima rises at Bhimashankar, the Godavari at Trimbakeshwar. That geography is not decoration. It is the reason these particular spots were sacralised in the first place.

#	Jyotirlinga	Place / Town	District	State
1	Somnath	Prabhas Patan, near Veraval	Gir Somnath	Gujarat
2	Mallikarjuna	Srisailam, on the Krishna	Nandyal	Andhra Pradesh
3	Mahakaleshwar	Ujjain, on the Shipra	Ujjain	Madhya Pradesh
4	Omkareshwar	Mandhata island, on the Narmada	Khandwa	Madhya Pradesh
5	Kedarnath	Kedarnath, on the Mandakini	Rudraprayag	Uttarakhand
6	Bhimashankar	Bhorgiri, in the Sahyadris	Pune	Maharashtra
7	Kashi Vishwanath	Varanasi, on the Ganga	Varanasi	Uttar Pradesh
8	Trimbakeshwar	Trimbak, near Nashik	Nashik	Maharashtra
9	Vaidyanath	Deoghar (disputed)	Deoghar	Jharkhand
10	Nageshwar	Near Dwarka (disputed)	Devbhumi Dwarka	Gujarat
11	Ramanathaswamy	Rameswaram, Pamban island	Ramanathapuram	Tamil Nadu
12	Grishneshwar	Verul, beside the Ellora caves	Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar	Maharashtra

State-wise count, and why Maharashtra leads

Maharashtra holds three of the twelve: Bhimashankar, Trimbakeshwar and Grishneshwar. Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh have two each. Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have one each.

If you count the contested claimants, Maharashtra's number rises to five, since Parli Vaijnath and Aundha Nagnath are both in the state and both are counted as Jyotirlingas by large sections of tradition. For a straight answer to a general knowledge question, stick with three.

Maharashtra: 3 (Bhimashankar, Trimbakeshwar, Grishneshwar)
Gujarat: 2 (Somnath, Nageshwar)
Madhya Pradesh: 2 (Mahakaleshwar, Omkareshwar)
One each: Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu

Only one Jyotirlinga lies in Telugu country, and it is Srisailam

Mallikarjuna at Srisailam, on a hill above the Krishna in Nandyal district of Andhra Pradesh, is the second in the stotram order. There is no Jyotirlinga in Telangana. That surprises people, because Telangana and coastal Andhra are dense with ancient Shiva temples, and several of them get loosely called Jyotirlingas in conversation.

The most common mix-up is with the Pancharama Kshetras: Draksharama, Amararama at Bhimavaram, Somarama at Gunupudi, Ksheerarama at Palakollu and Kumararama at Samalkot. These five are a separate and entirely Andhra tradition, tied to the Tarakasura story, not to the twelve. Kaleshwaram in Telangana and Kotilingala are likewise not on the Dwadasa list.

Srisailam is also a Shakti Peetha. Bhramaramba Devi's shrine shares the complex with Mallikarjuna, which makes it one of the very few sites in India counted in both the twelve Jyotirlingas and the eighteen Maha Shakti Peethas.

Three places where the list itself is disputed

Anyone comparing two books on this will hit a contradiction, so it is worth knowing where.

Vaidyanath is the biggest one. Baidyanath Dham at Deoghar in Jharkhand is the popular answer, but Parli Vaijnath in Beed district of Maharashtra claims the same title, and Baijnath in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh, is a third claimant. Nageshwar is contested between the temple near Dwarka in Gujarat, Aundha Nagnath in Hingoli district of Maharashtra, and Jageshwar in Almora, Uttarakhand.

The third, milder disagreement concerns Somnath itself, where some traditions and reconstructions differ on the precise historical linga. The temple standing today was rebuilt after 1947 on the initiative of Sardar Patel and inaugurated in 1951 by President Rajendra Prasad, the last in a long chain of destructions and rebuildings that began with Mahmud of Ghazni's raid in 1026.

What an exam actually asks about these twelve

Nobody is going to ask you to recite the list. The questions are oblique. They pair a temple with a river, a dynasty, a state or a neighbouring monument, and one wrong pair sinks the whole option.

The links worth fixing in your head are the ones that connect the Jyotirlingas to the rest of the art and culture syllabus. Grishneshwar sits within walking distance of the Ellora caves, where the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I had the Kailasa temple carved out of a single rock face in the eighth century. Rameswaram's Ramanathaswamy temple carries the longest pillared corridor in India, built up under the Sethupathi rulers, and belongs squarely to the Dravida architectural tradition. Kashi Vishwanath's present structure was built by Ahilyabai Holkar in 1780, which puts it in the Maratha temple revival, not the ancient period. Somnath is really a modern history question wearing a temple's clothes.

Before memorising any of this, look at how the pairing questions are actually framed. Ten minutes with the temple and architecture questions in the PYQ Mastery Course will tell you which attributes UPSC repeatedly tests, and you will find it is builder, river, state and architectural style, rarely the mythology.

Learn the twelve by geography, not by sequence. Group them as two in Gujarat's Saurashtra coast, two on the Narmada and Shipra in Madhya Pradesh, three in the Maharashtra Deccan, one each in the Himalaya, the Gangetic plain, Chhota Nagpur, the Krishna basin and the far south. Recall built on a map holds far longer than a chanted list.

FAQs

1. Which Jyotirlinga is in Telangana?

None. Telangana has no Jyotirlinga, and the nearest one is Mallikarjuna at Srisailam in Nandyal district of Andhra Pradesh, roughly a five hour drive from Hyderabad.

2. Is Draksharama a Jyotirlinga?

No. Draksharama is one of the five Pancharama Kshetras of Andhra Pradesh, along with Bhimavaram, Gunupudi, Palakollu and Samalkot, which form a separate tradition from the twelve Jyotirlingas.

3. Which state has the most Jyotirlingas?

Maharashtra, with three in the standard list: Bhimashankar near Pune, Trimbakeshwar near Nashik and Grishneshwar near Ellora. If the disputed claimants at Parli Vaijnath and Aundha Nagnath are included, the count rises to five.

4. Which is the first Jyotirlinga?

Somnath at Prabhas Patan in Gir Somnath district, Gujarat, is first in the Dwadasa Jyotirlinga Stotram and is traditionally called the first among the twelve. The current temple was rebuilt after Independence and inaugurated in 1951.

5. Can all 12 Jyotirlingas be visited in one trip?

Yes, but not comfortably in under two to three weeks, because they are spread across eight states from Uttarakhand to Tamil Nadu. Kedarnath is the constraint: it stays shut through winter and reopens only around Akshaya Tritiya in April or May, closing again near Bhai Dooj in October or November.

6. Why are there two temples claiming to be Vaidyanath Jyotirlinga?

Baidyanath Dham at Deoghar in Jharkhand and Parli Vaijnath in Beed district of Maharashtra both claim the title, and Baijnath in Himachal Pradesh is a third claimant, because different regional Puranic recensions place the site differently. Deoghar is the version most commonly listed.