Saurashtra, also known as Sorath or Kathiawar, is a peninsular region of Gujarat, India, located on the Arabian Sea coast. It covers about a third of Gujarat state, notably 11 districts of Gujarat, including Rajkot District. It was formerly a state of India before it merged with Bombay state. In 1961 it separated from Bombay and joined Gujarat. Location Saurashtra peninsula is bound on the south and south-west by the Arabian sea, on the north-west by the Gulf of Kutch and on the east by the Gulf of Khambhat. From the apex of these two gulfs, the Little Rann of Kutch and Khambhat, waste tracts half salt morass half sandy desert, stretch inland towards each other and complete the isolation of Kathiawar, except one narrow neck which connects it on the north-east with the mainland of Gujarat. The peninsula is sometimes referred to as Kathiawar after the Kathi Darbar, which once ruled most of the region. However, Saurashtra is not entirely synonymous with Kathiawar, since a small portion of the historical Saurashtra region extends beyond the Kathiawar peninsula. Sorath forms the southern portion of the peninsula. "sau" means 100 and "rasthra" means languages and sourasthra is made up with 100 languages so there isn't one original word. According to few experts, the name Saurashtra is derived from Saura Rashtra. In Sanskrit, Saura means Sun and Rashtra means country. It means, country of Sun, and there were 12 sun temples in ancient times in this region. Due to continued Islamic invasions, the idols of deities of these temples were moved to other places, one of those is located at Kanakaditya Temple at Kasheli near Pawas in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra. The location of other 11 idols are currently unknown. Districts The Saurashtra region comprises the south western part of modern Gujarat state and the districts included in this region are: Devbhoomi Dwarka Jamnagar Morbi Rajkot Porbandar Junagadh Gir Somnath Amreli Bhavnagar Botad Surendranagar Ahmedabad (part) {Dhandhuka taluka} The region also historically encompassed the Diu district of the Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu union territory. History Referred to as Saurashtra and as some other names as well over a period of time, since the Mahabharata and Vedic period, this region is mentioned again as Surastrene, or Saraostus in the first century CE Periplus of the Erythraean Sea: In earliest foreign mention, Egyptian mathematician, geographer, astrologer Claudius Ptolemy and Greek