Buldhana district बुलढाणा जिल्हा |
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District of Maharashtra | |
Location of Buldhana district in Maharashtra |
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Country | India |
State | Maharashtra |
Administrative division | Amravati Division |
Headquarters | Buldhana |
Tehsils | Buldhana, Chikhli, Deulgaon Raja, Khamgaon, Shegaon, Malkapur, Motala, Nandura, Mehkar, Lonar, Sindkhed Raja, Jalgaon Jamod, Sangrampur |
Government | |
• Lok Sabha constituencies | Buldhana (MH-5), Raver (MH-4)( shared with Jalgaon district) |
• Assembly seats | Malkapur, Buldhana, Chikhli, Sindkhed Raja, Mehkar, Khamgaon, Jalgaon Jamod |
Area | |
• Total | 9,640 km2 (3,720 sq mi) |
Population (2011) | |
• Total | 2,588,039 |
• Density | 270/km2 (700/sq mi) |
• Urban | 21.2 |
Demographics | |
• Literacy | 82.09% |
• Sex ratio | 928 |
Major highways | NH-6 |
Average annual precipitation | 946 mm |
Website | Official website |
Buldhana district (Marathi: बुलढाणा जिल्हा) is a district in the Amravati division of Maharashtra state in western India. It is situated at the westernmost border of Vidarbha region of Maharashtra and is 500 km from the state capital, Mumbai. It is bounded by Madhya Pradesh on the north, Akola, Washim, and Amravati districts on the east, Jalna district on the south, and Jalgaon and Aurangabad districts on the west. Buldhana is religiously important as the site of the Shri Gajanan Maharaj temple, at Shegaon.
The name of the district is derived probably from Bhil Thana (place of Bhils, a tribal group).
Buldhana, along with the rest of Berar Province, was part of the kingdom of Vidarbha mentioned in the Mahabharata, a Sanskrit epic poem. Berar formed part of the Maurya Empire during the reign of Ashoka (272–231 BCE). Berar came under the rule of the Satavahana dynasty (2nd century BCE–2nd century CE), the Vakataka dynasty (3rd to 6th centuries), the Chalukya dynasty (6th to 8th centuries), the Rashtrakuta Dynasty (8th to 10th centuries), the Chalukyas again (10th to 12th centuries), and finally the Yadava dynasty of Devagiri (late 12th to early 14th centuries). A period of Muslim rule began when Alauddin Khilji, Sultan of Delhi, conquered the region in the early 14th century. The region was part of the Bahmani Sultanate, which broke away from the Delhi Sultanate in the mid-14th century. The Bahmani Sultanate broke up into smaller sultanates at the end of the 15th century, and in 1572 Berar became part of the Nizam Shahi sultanate, based at Ahmednagar. The Nizam Shahis ceded Berar to the Mughal Empire in 1595. As Mughal rule started to unravel at the start of the 18th century, Asaf Jah I, Nizam of Hyderabad, seized the southern provinces of the empire (including Berar) in 1724, forming an independent state.