Somnath — the First

Of the twelve great Jyotirlingas — the “lingas of light” — the first is Somnath, on the western coast of Gujarat, where the land meets the Arabian Sea.

The name Somnath means “lord of Soma” — Soma being the moon.

The story is this. The moon, who is called Chandra or Soma, had married all twenty-seven daughters of the patriarch Daksha (yes, the same Daksha; this was earlier in his life). The twenty-seven daughters are the Nakshatras, the lunar mansions, the twenty-seven star-clusters along the moon’s monthly path.

But the moon loved only one of his wives — Rohini — and ignored the other twenty-six. The neglected wives complained to their father. Daksha grew angry. He cursed the moon: you will lose your light. You will wane to nothing.

The moon began to fade. He grew thinner each night. The world noticed: plants that depended on moonlight withered, the tides slowed, the oceans began to dry. The moon, in distress, went looking for help. He went from god to god. None could lift Daksha’s curse — once a patriarch had cursed in earnest, even the gods could not simply undo it.

At last the moon was told: go to Shiva. He can do what we cannot.

The moon went to the western shore — what is now the Gujarat coast — and there he set up a linga and worshipped it for a long time. He fasted. He prayed. He did austerity to Shiva.

Shiva came.

“I cannot lift Daksha’s curse entirely,” Shiva told the moon. “A patriarch’s curse must run. But I can soften it. From this day, you will wane for fifteen days — the half-month of waning — and then you will wax for fifteen days, growing full again. You will lose your light by half and gain it by half. You will not be destroyed.”

And to mark his blessing, Shiva placed himself permanently in the linga the moon had been worshipping. He took the moon onto his own head — that crescent on Shiva’s hair is the moon, partial, in the form Daksha’s curse left him.

The shrine the moon had set up became the Somnath temple — “lord of Soma.”

Somnath has had a long history in the world after the Purana was written. It has been destroyed and rebuilt many times — by Mahmud of Ghazni in the 11th century, again later, again later. Each time it has been rebuilt. The current temple, on the same site by the sea, was rebuilt in 1951 after India’s independence.

For a reader, the story of Somnath is the story of partial healing. Some wounds in this world cannot be undone — the curse stays — but they can be softened, made livable, given a rhythm of waxing as well as waning. The moon’s waxing and waning, the central rhythm of the Indian calendar, is itself the form Shiva gave the curse.

The next Jyotirlinga is in the southern hills, where Parvati went looking for her son.