Deccan Plateau

The Deccan Plateau is a large plateau that covers most of South India. It is triangular, surrounded by three mountain ranges. It extends over eight Indian states (principally, Telangana, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu).

The plateau covers 422,000 square kilometres (163,000 sq mi), 27.7 percent of India's landmass.^[1]

The uplands, areas of higher landmass, form a triangle that is nested in the familiar downward-pointing triangle of the Indian sub-continent's coastline. In the south of India, the plateau is largely over 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) above sea level. In the north it is mostly about 500 metres (1,600 ft) above sea level.^[2] The plateau is extremely large, and there are many habitats: different ecosystems with different sorts of vegetation, climate, geology and animals. The forests on the plateau are older than the Himalayan mountains.

The Western Ghats and The Eastern Ghats surround the west and east of the plateau respectively. These mountain ranges rise from their nearby coastal plains and nearly meet at the southern tip of India. The mountains make the southward-pointing vertex of a triangle. The northern boundary of the triangle is made up by the Satpura Range and Vindhya Range. These northern ranges separate the plateau from the heavily populated riverine plains of northern India.

The name is an anglicised form of the Prakrit word dakkhin, which comes from the Sanskrit word dakṣiṇa- (Sanskrit: दक्षिण), meaning 'South' or 'The South'.^[3][4]

1. ↑ Encyc Brit
2. ↑ "The Deccan Plateau". rainwaterharvesting.org. Retrieved 2008-11-28.
3. ↑ Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary, p. 498 (scanned image at SriPedia Initiative): Sanskrit dakṣiṇa meaning 'right', 'southern'.
4. ↑ "Deccan | plateau, India". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2019-03-22.