Yavatmal

Yavatmal, with the rest of Berar, must have formed part of the legendary kingdom of Vidarbha mentioned in the Mahabharata, with the eponymous capital of which Bidar in the Nizam’s Dominions has been identified; and legend identifies the village of Kelapur, which gives its name to one of the talukas of the District, with Kuntalapur, one of the cities of Vidarbha; but the identification of sites in this nebulous kingdom must always be a matter of pure conjecture. The name of the kingdom has, however, been preserved in its adjectival form Vidarbha in the east of Kelapur and flows into the Penganga.

Berar formed part of the empire of Ashoka Maurya, who reigned from 272 to 231 B.C., but before the disruption of the Maurya empire seems to have regained independence under a local chieftain, for towards the end of the reign of Pushyamitra Sungna, who has commanded the forces of Brihadratha, the last Maurya emperor, and having slain his master, had established an independent dynasty with its capital at Vidisa, the modern Bhilsa, Agnimitra, his son, found it necessary to make war on his neighbour, the Raja of Vidarbha. The latter was defeated, and the river Wardha was made the boundary between the two kingdoms. There is no indication of the dynasty to which this Raja of Vidarbha belonged or of the extent of his dominions; but the incident is mentioned as one, which affected Eastern Berar in times, which, in the present state of our historical knowledge, may almost be turned, prehistoric

It is unnecessary, in considering the history of the Yavatmal District, to trace the connection of the Andhras, Sakas, Pahlavas and Yavatmal with Berar; but it is practically certain that the District with most, it not the whole, of the rest of the Province, formed part of the dominions of the Vakatak dynasty. Of this line of kings little is known; but if their capital was, as has been conjectured, at Bhandak, a village near Chandrapur, the Yavatmal District was very near the seat of Government. A short inscription in Cave XVI at Ajanta gives the names of seven members of the Vakatak family, and from other sources we know that ten Rajas, the names of all of whom save one, have been handed down, ascended the throne. The first was Vindhyasakti, who has been variously placed in A.D.275, 400, and allowing 25 years as the average length of a reign, 575; but all of these dates are very uncertain. The Chalukyas and the Rashtrakutas have left no monuments in the District. In the latter half of the tenth century it was included in the kingdom of Vakpati II, Munja, the Paramara Raja of Malwa, whose dominions stretched southwards to the Godavari; but about 995 A.D., Taila II defeated and captured the Raja of Malwa, and Berar thus fell once more under the sway of the Chalukyas. Towards the end of the twelfth century the Yadavas of Deorigi seized most of the northern districts of the Chalukya kingdom, but it may be doubted whether the whole, if any part, of the Yavatmal District was annexed by this dynasty. The eastern tracts were probably occupied by the Gonds, whose power in the neighbourhood of Chandrapur seems to have waxed as that of the Chalukyas waned.

Yavatmal was the main town of the Berar Sultanate and according to old writings "the safest place in the world". It was part of the dominion of Aladdin Hassan Bahman Shah who founded the Bahmani Sultanate in 1347. In 1572, Murtaza Shah, ruler of the Ahmadnagar Sultanate (current day Ahmadnagar District), annexed the Yavatmal district. In 1596, Chand Bibi, warrior queen of Ahmadnagar, ceded the district of Yavatmal to the Mughal Empire, then rulers of a large part of India. Following the death of the sixth Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb in 1707, Yavatmal was passed on to the Maratha Empire. When Raghoji Bhonsle-I became ruler of the Nagpur kingdom in 1783, he included the Yavatmal district in his territory. After the British East India Company created Berar Province in 1853, Yavatmal became part of East Berar District in 1863 and later part of the South East Berar district—both districts of the Central Provinces and Berar. In 1864, Yavatmal along with some other Talukas was formed into the district initially called Southeast Berar and later renamed Wani. In 1903, Berar was leased by the Nizam of Hyderabad to the British Government of India. In 1905 British changed the district from Wani to Yavatmal. Yavatmal remained part of Madhya Pradesh until the 1956 reorganization of states when it was transferred to the Bombay State. With the creation of the Maharashtra state on 1st May 1960, Yavatmal district became a part of the same.