Mathura District

Mathura district situated along the banks of the river Yamuna is a district of Uttar Pradesh state of north-central India. The historic city of Mathura is the district headquarters. Mathura district is home to many important sites associated with goddess Radha and Lord Krishna, who was born in Mathura and grew up in the nearby town of Vrindavan. Both cities are some of the most sacred sites in the Vaishnava tradition, making Mathura district an important Hindu pilgrimage centre.

The District is part of Agra division. Total area of Mathura district is 3340 sq. km. There are 5 tehsils in Mathura district.
* Mathura
* Govardhan
* Chhata
* Mant
* Mahavan. Mathura is bounded on the northeast by Aligarh District, on the southeast by Hathras District, on the south by Agra District, and on the west by Rajasthan and northwest by Haryana state.

History

Mathura has an ancient history. The district lies in the centre of the cultural region of Braj. According to the Archaeological Survey of India plaque at the Mathura Museum, the city is mentioned in the oldest Indian epic, the ''Ramayana''. In the epic, the Ikshvaku prince Shatrughna slays a demon called Lavanasura and claims the land. Afterwards, the place came to be known as Madhuvan as it was thickly wooded, then Madhupura and later Mathura.

In the 6th century BCE Mathura became the capital of the Surasena mahajanapada. The city was later ruled by the Maurya empire (4th to 2nd centuries BC) and the Shunga Empire dynasty (2nd century BC). It may have come under the control of Indo-Greeks some time between 180 BCE and 100 BC. It then reverted to local rule before being conquered by the Indo-Scythians during the 1st century BC.

Mathuran art and culture reached its zenith under the Kushan dynasty which had Mathura as one of their capitals, the other being Purushapura (Peshawar). The dynasty had kings with the names of Kujula Kadphises, Kanishka, Huvishka and Vasudeva I.

Megasthenes, writing in the early 3rd century BC, mentions Mathura as a great city under the name Μέθορα (''Méthora'').

The Indo-Scythians (aka Sakas or Shakas) conquered the area of Mathura over Indian kings around 60 BCE.

The district was then ruled by the Guptas and the Vardhas(Harsha) before falling into the hands of local Rajput and Jat rulers

The findings of ancient stone inscriptions in Maghera, a town from Mathura, provide historical artifacts giving more details on this era of Mathura. The opening of the 3 line text of these inscriptions are in Brahmi script and were translated as: "In the 116th year of the Greek kings..."

The Indo-Scythian satraps of Mathura are sometimes called the "Northern Satraps", as opposed to the "Western Satraps" ruling in Gujarat and Malwa. After Rajuvula, several successors are known to have ruled as vassals to the Kushans, such as the "Great Satrap" Kharapallana and the "Satrap" Vanaspara, who are known from an inscription discovered in Sarnath, and dated to the 3rd year of Kanishka (c 130 AD), in which they were paying allegiance to the Kushans.

Mathura served as one of the Kushan Empire's two capitals from the first to the third centuries.

Fa Xian mentions the city, as a centre of Buddhism about AD 400; while his successor Xuanzang, who visited the city in 634 AD, which he mentions as Mot'ulo, and said that it contained twenty Buddhist monasteries and five Brahmanical temples. Later, he went east to Thanesar, Jalandhar in the eastern Punjab, before climbing up to visit predominantly Theravada monasteries in the Kullu valley and turning southward again to Bairat and then Mathura, on the Yamuna river.

The city was sacked and many of its temples destroyed by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1018 and again by Sikandar Lodhi, who ruled the Sultanate of Delhi from 1489 to 1517.

Sikander Lodhi earned the epithet of 'But Shikan', the 'Destroyer of Hindu deities'. The Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, built the city's ''Jami Masjid''. The noteworthy fact is that the exact place of birth of Krishna, according to historians, is in the place of worship of the Hindus, though the mosque was built near the birthplace of Krishna. The bigger Krishna shrine, better known as Dwarkadheesh temple is a few metres away from birthplace of Krishna. It was built in 1815 by Seth Gokuldas Parikh, Treasurer of Gwalior.

Demographics

According to the 2011 census Mathura district has a population of 2,547,184, roughly equal to the nation of Kuwait or the US state of Nevada. This gives it a ranking of 167th in India (out of a total of 640). The district has a population density of . Its population growth rate over the decade 2001-2011 was 22.53%. Mathura has a sex ratio of 858 females for every 1000 males, and a literacy rate of 72.65%. 29.68% of the population lived in urban areas. Scheduled Castes made up 19.89% of the population.

The district has about 1,600,000 voters, including 2,00,000 Jat people, 3,500,000 Thakur, 1,70,000 Brahmin and 150,000 Dhangars. Mathura receives a large number of daily visitors besides pilgrims who stay for an average of 3 days. Mathura's urban area's floating population on normal days is between 100,000 and 125,000 per day, whereas on festive and auspicious days it is over twice the population of urban area.

The majority of people in Mathura are Hindus. Muslims are equally divided between rural and urban areas while the Hindu population is mainly rural.

Language

At the time of the 2011 Census of India, 75.20% of the population in the district spoke Hindi, 22.25% Braj and 0.81% Urdu