CHAMPARAN, a district of British India, in the Tirhut division of Behar and Orissa, occupying the north-west corner of Bihar, between the two rivers Gandak and Baghmati and the Nepal hills. It has an area of 3,J31 square m., and a population ( 1931) of 1,080,956. The district is a vast level, except in the north and north-west, where outliers of the Himalayas, known as the Sumeswar and Dun ranges, extend for some 15 miles into the alluvial plain. The former hills rise to a height of 2,884 feet at Fort Sumeswar; at their eastern extremity is the Bhikna Thori pass into Nepal. The two ranges, which have an area of about 364 square miles, contain stretches of forest and jungle. Else where the land is closely cultivated, and teems with an active agricultural population. The principal rivers are the Gandak, navigable all the year round, the Burh Gandak, Lelbagi, Dhanauti and Baghmati. Old beds of rivers intersect Champaran, and one of these forms a chain of lakes which occupies an area of square m. in the centre of the district.
Champaran was the chief seat of indigo planting in Bihar before the decline of that industry. There are about 4o saltpetre re fineries. The district suffered severely from drought in 1866 and 1874, and again in 1897. As a protection against crop failures the Tribini and Dhaka canals have been constructed. The former derives its supply from the Gandak river at Tribini immediately below the Nepal frontier and irrigates a tract in the north of the district. The latter is a minor work taking off from the river Lalbukaya and irrigating 13,000 acres in the east. The district is traversed by the Bengal and North-Western railway. A consider able trade is conducted with Nepal.
The administrative headquarters are at Motihari (pop. 13,828) ; and Bettia (pop. 24,291) a subdivisional town, is the head quarters of the large estate known as the Bettia Raj and of a Roman Catholic mission founded in 1748; Sugauli, a small mili tary station, was the scene of a massacre during the Mutiny; it was here that the Nepalese treaty of 1815 was signed. Three of the sandstone pillars with pillar edicts which Asoka erected to mark the stages of his journey into Nepal are found in this district at the following places : Lauriya Nandangarh, Lauriya Araraj and Rampurisa.