A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c7: Chapter II. The Land in Relation to History
A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c7
- Language
- English
Chapter II. The Land in Relation to History
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North and South—the peninsula—the Western Ghats—passes and trade routes—the Eastern Ghats—the Deccan plateau—rainfall and vegetation—changes in coast level—drainage—the Godāvari—the Krishna, Bhīma and Tungabhadra—the Kaveri—the Narmada—the Tapti—ports—western coast strip—the east coast—river deltas—Coromandel coast.
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IN this chapter we shall attempt to give a general description of the geography of the country to serve as the foundation for the historical chapters which follow. Our concern is primarily with the land lying to the south of the Vindhyas, that rugged mountainous tract varying much in width and elevation and stretching almost east to west along the Tropic of Cancer. On the northern side of the Vindhyas the slope is gentle and there are no well-marked spurs or steep valleys; on the southern side, however, there is a steep fall from the crest to the valley of the Narmada, and we have a mountain wall buttressed by several forest-clad spurs overlooking the deep, narrow trough of the river bounded on the south by the Satpura-Mahadeo-Maikal range. From the southern slopes of the Satpuras the Tapti flows parallel to the Narmada to the west and the Mahanadi to the Bay of Bengal in the east. This double wall effectively divides the peninsular South from the plains of North India, but not in a manner that hinders seriously the intercommunication between the two regions. From prehistorical times to the present day there has been no period when the two regions did not influence each other politically and culturally, and on at least three occasions before the advent of British rule both the North and the South formed parts of a single empire embracing nearly the whole of India.
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The peninsula juts out into the Indian Ocean between the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal and narrows to a point at Cape Comorin. From Cape Comorin the Malabar and Coromandel coasts extend for a thousand miles, the one to the north-west, and the other at first northward and then to the north-east. There are few good natural harbours along either coast, though the west coast is a little better than the Coromandel coast in This has no object but the the colonization of the rulers; and Childe, maintaining as part of the theory of the colonization this respect, as places like Cochin, Goa and Bombay offer fairly safe anchorages for ships. Located half-way on the maritime routes from the Mediterranean and Africa to China, peninsular India developed and maintained a fairly brisk maritime trade with the nations on either side, and had a large share in the colonization of the eastern lands across the Bay of Bengal. And its rulers, at least some of them like the Sātavāhanas, Pallavas and Cholas, are known to have devoted particular care to the maintenance of a strong navy. The Malabar coast retained for many centuries an unenviable reputation for the piratical activity of its sailors, while the mariners of the Chola country came to be looked upon as authorities on sailing conditions in the Indian Ocean and were cited by the Arab geographers of the Middle Ages. An early account of the ports of peninsular India and the conditions of maritime trade is found in the *Periplus of the Erythraean Sea*.
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SOUTH INDIA (PHYSICAL)
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FEET 6,000 3,000 1,500 600 SEA LEVEL
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INDORE. Vindhya Hills Mahadeo Hills Maikal Hills Narmada R. Tapi R. NAGPUR Wardha R. Penganga R. Godavari R. Balaghat Hills Manjira R. POONA. SHOLAPUR Bhima R. Krishna R. Tungabhadra R. HYDERABAD GUNTUR Krishna R. North Pennar R. South Pennar R. BANGALORE MADRAS TRICHINOPOLY MADURA Vaigai R. TRIVANDRUM CAPE COMORIN CEYLON COLOMBO JAFFNA
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W e s t e r n G h a t s K O N K A N B O M B A Y GOA MANGALORE CALICUT Malabar Coast D E C C A N E a s t e r n G h a t s Coromandel Coast
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Bababudan Hills MYSORE Nilgiri Hills Anaimalai Hills
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The nucleus of the peninsula is a triangular block of very old rocks that covers its greater part from the Satmala-Ajanta ranges to the Nilgiris. This has a typical plateau relief: its western edge is a steep brink, the Western Ghats, overlooking the west coast formed by a narrow strip of rough, wet lowland; its surface has a gentle fall to a lower brink in the east, the Eastern Ghats. Between the Eastern Ghats and the Coromandel coast is a belt of lowland, the Carnatic, much wider, smoother and relatively drier than the western strip.
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Seen from the west the Western Ghats present the appearance of a gigantic sea-wall, often rising in steps from the shoreline—hence the name ‘ghats’. They are a steep and rugged mass of hills, little more than 2,000 feet above sea-level at the northern end, rising to more than 4,000 about the latitude of Bombay, generally increasing in altitude towards the south and culminating in the Nilgiris with Dodabetta at a height of 8,760 feet where the Eastern Ghats meet the Western after making a sweep from the other side of the peninsula. Immediately south of the Nilgiri plateau lies the only break in the continuity of the Western Ghats, the Palghat or Coimbatore gap, which is about twenty miles from north to south and affords lowland access from the Carnatic to the Malabar coast at a level of about a thousand feet above the sea. This easy road into the Carnatic from Cochin and Calicut and other ports on the west has played an important role all through history. South of the gap, the ghats reach an even greater height in Anaimudi peak (8,841 ft.) and strike SSE., terminating at the extremity of the peninsula in Cape Comorin. The crest line of the ghats is generally at a distance of from fifty to one hundred miles from the Arabian Sea although in places it approaches so close to the shore as to restrict the width of the coastal plain to no more than five miles, and it is not uncommon for spurs and ridges to end as cliffs along the coast.
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North of Goa the surface of the ghats is largely covered by an immense thickness of basaltic lava-flows—the Deccan trap of Indian geology. They reach their maximum thickness about the latitude of Bombay. ‘The weathering action of ages has shaped the trap formation into natural citadels and fortresses which dominate the crest of the hills, and were found most useful as military positions in the wild days of Maratha supremacy.’ The uplands round Poona being clothed with the volcanic cotton soil are quite as fertile as the alluvial valleys of the Narmada and Tapti rivers. South of Goa, however, the ghats become a series of gneisses and schists, much more resistant than the lava-capped belt.
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‘South of Bombay the seaward face of the hills is clothed with dense forest, and passes inland from the coast are few. But in the north the interior plateau is approached by several roads, famous in history, from the level coast strip on the western side.’ Notable among these is Trimbak Pass at the source of the Godāvari. Vaitarna, the only considerable river draining into the Arabian Sea across northern Konkan, issues from a point almost opposite to the source of the Godāvari. The sacredness of its source and the importance of its valley made it one of the earliest trade routes between the sea and the north Deccan, and the beauty of the lower reaches of the river attracted to its banks some of the earliest Aryan settlements. The Thal Ghat is another historic pass carrying the road from Bombay to Agra and now the northern branch of the Western railway. Then we have the Pimpri Pass bearing an old route from Sopara and Kalyan to Nasik, and the Nana Pass between Junnar and the Konkan, guarded by Shivner, the fort of Junnar. Bhimsankar at the source of the Bhima river, and Chakan are important historic strongholds in this region. Perhaps the best known of the passes is the Bhor Ghat or Khandala Pass (about 2,000 feet) by which the Bombay-Poona road and the southern branch of the Western railway enter the Deccan; this ancient military road ‘has ever been regarded as the key to the Deccan’ and on or near it lie the historic caves of Kondane, Karle, Bhāja and Bedsa. The Amba Pass carrying the road from Ratnagiri to Kolhapur, and the passes providing less important routes from Vengurla to Belgaum, Karwar to Dharwar, and so on, need not be mentioned. The Shencottah Ghat and the Aramboli Pass form the two southernmost passes providing routes between Travancore and the Pāndya country.
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‘The precipitous square-cut peaks, which give such a fantastic appearance to the scenery of the Western Ghats, are to be found wherever horizontal strata of varying degrees of resistance are subject to sub-aerial denudation. They repeat themselves in the droogs of Deccan scenery.’
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In South India the Anaimalai hills form the most striking range; the higher range consists of a series of plateaux 7,000 feet in elevation running up to peaks of over 8,000. They are covered with rolling downs and dark evergreen forests, cut off from one another by deep valleys characterized by magnificent scenery. The lower range which lies to the west has an average elevation of 3-4,000 feet, and thousands of acres of this area are now under coffee. It contains the teak belt and also produces most of the timber usual in deciduous forest belts of the same elevation; much valuable game, including elephant which gives its name to the range, are also found there. It is inhabited by hill tribes like the Kāḍan, Muduvan and Pulaiyan.
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The Eastern Ghats possess little of the magnificence gained by the regular structure but irregular outlines of the ghats of the west. They are scattered, broken, and of much lower altitude, though geologically they seem to be distinctly older than the Western Ghats. Beginning in Orissa, they pass into Madras state keeping parallel to the coast, generally at a distance of fifty miles as far south as latitude 16°N. They then recede from the coast, follow a north to south course till the latitude of Madras where they strike south-westwards to form the southern edge of the Deccan plateau in its wider sense and meet the Western Ghats in the Nilgiris. Because of their lower elevation and their broken character, the Eastern Ghats have not been as great an obstacle to intercourse between the plateau and the coastal plain as the Western Ghats; and the fact that the major rivers rise on the crest of the Western Ghats and course down all the way to the Bay of Bengal, cutting across the Eastern Ghats, has also helped freedom of movement.
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The Deccan plateau has a general elevation of 2,000 feet, but tends to become higher and more rugged as the ghats are approached on the east and west, and attains its highest elevation at the southern end, in the Nilgiris formed by the convergence of the two ghats; the Mysore plateau in consequence has a higher average elevation than the rest of the Deccan. The general slope of the whole is towards the south-east as indicated by the course of the major rivers of the peninsula, the Godāvari, Krishna (Kistna) and Kaveri (Cauvery). The monotony of the plateau surface is broken by a number of spurs from the Western Ghats and other mountain features. Among these, two may be noted in particular: the two ranges enclosing the triangular plateau on which Ahmadnagar stands, the watershed between the Godāvari and the Bhima; and the Mahadeo range forming the watershed between the Bhima and the Krishna. Closely associated with the Eastern Ghats are a range of hills with different local names. The Nallamalais extend north to south from the banks of the Krishna to the Penner valley and are made up of Cuddapah quartzite overlaid by Cuddapah slate; their average height is less than 2,000 feet, but the maximum elevation reached is over 3,000; they contain several plateaux but scarcity of water has foiled attempts at habitation there. Śrīśailam was apparently inhabited of old, and the remains of ancient towns, forts, temples, reservoirs and wells testify to the prosperity of the settlements. Only Chenchus inhabit the region today. The forests are neither dense nor large as the rainfall is poor and the rocks are deeply fissured and fail to retain enough moisture on the suface for large trees to grow. The Erramalais to the west of the Nallamalais in the Kurnool district, and other minor ranges, do not call for detailed notice.
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The south-eastern and the relatively higher southern Mysore portion of the plateau is a granitoid and gneissic country strikingly different from the trap region. The extensive vista of level-topped, square-crested, nearly horizontal lava-capped hills gives place to more rounded and graceful dome-capped hills and knolls in the south. Many of these circular or nearly circular hills rise precipitously from the surrounding gneissic plain, and their strategic value was appreciated by successive rulers of the land who erected extensive and sometimes impregnable fortifications on them.
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Lying athwart the course of the Arabian Sea branch of the south-west monsoon, the Western Ghats bring about a striking difference in rainfall between the regions on either side of them; west of the ghats, the steep edge receives the bulk of the moisture carried by the monsoon, while to the east on the leeward side is the rain-shadow region where the rainfall is not only scanty but highly variable in character. The monsoon literally pours on the west, the annual average being 80 inches on the coastal plain increasing in the higher regions to more than 300 in some stations like Mahabaleshwar. On the eastern side of the ghats the rainfall in most cases is less than 40 inches. This difference in rainfall is naturally reflected in the vegetation. The copious summer rainfall of the coastal plain and the windward slopes of the ghats clothes them with dense vegetation of the evergreen-forest type. The forests contain many kinds of trees of great size and much economic value. Bamboos are plentiful and associated with them locally are to be found teak in abundance, rosewood, and ironwood. The shore is skirted with coconuts and the villages surrounded with groves of betel-nut palm and talipot. Cassia and cardamom flourish wild in the jungles, and the fact that pepper can be cultivated without the screens used in other parts of India to preserve the humidity conveys an idea of how naturally moist the coastal region is.
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In the Deccan plateau where the rainfall is not enough to support a vegetation of tall evergreen trees, deciduous forests form the most conspicuous feature of the flora. Teak is found at intervals in relatively well-watered areas over the whole region, though it is economically cultivated under plantation conditions only in certain places. Forests of odoriferous sandalwood abound in Mysore and the adjoining districts. The steep slopes of the Eastern Ghats also have an evergreen type of vegetation, though owing to the lighter rainfall the trees are shorter than those of the Malabar area.
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Changes in the level of the Coromandel coast in historical times are attested to in different ways; the once wealthy commerical cities of Korkai and Kāyal on the Tinnevelly coast, which were flourishing in the thirteenth century, are now buried under sand dunes miles from the sea; on the other hand in some places not very distant from those named above the sea has encroached on the land, and large parts of once-flourishing ports like Kāvēripaṭṭinam and Māmallapuram (Mahābalipuram) seem to have disappeared under the waves. In some instances, particularly Kāvēripaṭṭinam, popular tradition preserves the memory of the occurrence though with no clue to its date. Similar changes have occurred in the Gulf of Cambay and its neighbourhood.
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The Narmada and Tapti in the north are the two remarkable exceptions to the generally eastward drainage of the peninsula; they flow westwards in comparatively deep and narrow valleys into the rapidly shallowing Gulf of Cambay. The Western Ghats form the water-parting between the easterly and westerly drainage of the plateau; the crest line of the water-parting is at no great distance from the west coast, but the main rivers of the peninsula which have their sources in these heavily forested ghats course right across the peninsula and drain into the Bay of Bengal. This is thought to be the relic of a relatively ancient geographical feature, a view which finds support in the sluggish nature of the rivers which flow along fairly broad and flat-bottomed valleys across a wide and nearly level or gently undulating tract of country in striking contrast to the short swift-flowing rapids that drain the western face of the ghats into the Arabian Sea. The steep-sided valleys of the streams and their tendency to deepen and reach backward at their sources seem to testify to a yet unadjusted gradient.
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The three great rivers of the plateau proper are the Godāvari, the Krishna and the Kaveri; and to these may be added the Mahanadi. Among the minor rivers, the Penner, Palar, Pennar and the Tambraparni are important. In the early part of their courses these rivers seem rather to drain the country than water it as they flow rapidly in deep rocky valleys, but as they approach the more level ground of the coastal plain, dams have been thrown across all of them and their waters turned to account for irrigation. The deltas of the Godāvari, Krishna and Kaveri are covered with wide expanses of irrigated crops.
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The Godāvari is surpassed in India only by the Ganges and the Indus for its sanctity, the picturesque scenery of its course, and its utility to man. Rising in the hills behind Trimbak in the Nasik district, within fifty miles of the Arabian Sea, it runs a course of 900 miles before reaching the Bay of Bengal and drains an area of 1,12,000 square miles. Above Nasik it flows along a narrow rocky bed, but farther east the banks are lower and more earthy. Below Sironcha it is joined on its left by the Pranhita, carrying the combined waters of the Wardha and the Wainganga which drain the whole of the Satpura and Nagpur plains. A few miles farther down it receives the Indravati which drains the wild and thickly forested areas of the Eastern Ghats in Bastar and its neighbours. Below this confluence the river strikes a predominantly south-easterly course till it joins the sea. Half-way in its course, after it enters Andhra Pradesh, the bed of the river is broad and sandy, from one to two miles in width, and interrupted by rocks in only two places. After running placidly through this flat and monotonous country, it begins to force its way across the Eastern Ghats by a deep and narrow gorge barely 200 yards wide, on either side of which the picturesque wooded slopes of the hills rise almost sheer from the dark waters of the river. Once across the ghats, the river opens out again and forms a series of broad reaches dotted with low alluvial islands—the lankas. Below Rajahmundry it forks into two—the Gautami Godāvari on the east and the Vasistha Godāvari on the west which with their distributaries flow down the fan-shaped delta formed in the course of ages by the silt the river has deposited. Below Rajahmundry the river has been dammed at Dowleśvaram from where high-level channels take the water for irrigating an enormous area of the country. The main canals are also used as lines of communication.
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Shorter by a hundred miles in its course than the Godāvari, and perhaps less sacred in popular estimation than either the Godāvari or Kaveri, the Krishna is the largest of the three in the area of its drainage basin. Rising just north of Mahabaleshwar, within forty miles of the Arabian Sea, it flows southwards skirting the eastern spurs of the Western Ghats and receiving a number of tributaries mostly from the west. Below Kurundvad it turns eastwards to pass through the south Maratha country into Mysore and Andhra Pradesh. Near the hills the channel is rocky and the stream too rapid for navigation, but it is used largely for irrigation in the Satara district and the more open country to the south-east. In the Belgaum and Bijapur districts its banks of black soil and laterite are high (between 20 and 50 feet) especially on the southern side. On entering Mysore it drops down from the tableland of the Deccan proper to the alluvial doab of Raichur by crossing a succession of lofty ledges of granite that stretch across the river. The stream is very swift here with a fall of over 400 feet in three miles. It receives first the waters of the Bhima draining the Ahmadnagar, Poona and Sholapur districts, and later the Tungabhadra draining the northern part of the Mysore plateau and the districts of Bellary and Kurnool. Then for a considerable distance its bed is deep and rocky, its channel has a rapid fall, and then its course winds in a north-easterly direction across the Nallamalai range. On reaching the Eastern Ghats, it turns sharply south-eastwards and flows directly to the sea which it enters by two mouths. At Vijayavada, forty-five miles from the sea as the crow flies, it runs through a gap barely 1,300 yards wide in a range of gneissic hills and just below this point the river has been dammed for irrigation purposes. Below the dam the channel of the river is at a somewhat higher level than the surrounding plain.
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The Tungabhadra is the chief tributary of the Krishna formed by the union, near Kudali, of the two streams Tunga and Bhadra which rise near the Bababudan hills in the western marches of Mysore. The united stream strikes in a north-easterly direction through Mysore and skirts the Ceded Districts till it reaches its confluence with the Krishna a little beyond Kurnool town after a total run of 400 miles. The bed of both the headstreams of the Tungabhadra is rocky, and the country along the course of the united stream rises rapidly away from the river rendering difficult the use of its waters for irrigation. The river is perennial in character and comes down in frequent heavy rushes during the rains. It was dammed by the rulers of Vijayanagar near Hampi for watering the palaces and gardens of that great city.
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The Tungabhadra has served as a historic natural frontier right through the centuries; the Chālukyas of Bādāmi, the Rāshtrakūtas, and the Chālukyas of Kalyāni to its north, and the Pallavas and Cholas to its south, not to speak of the Gangas who were mostly subordinate to one or other of these powers, made several attempts to extend their sway across the river and only met with indifferent success. The historic city of Vijayanagar and its predecessor Kampili rose on the southern bank of the Tungabhadra. And the Raichur doab between the Tungabhadra and Krishna might well be called ‘the cockpit of the Deccan’.
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The Kaveri, known as the southern Ganges, has a course of 475 miles and is equally famous for its sanctity, its picturesque scenery and its usefulness for irrigation. Tamil literature cherishes many traditions of its origin and is replete with expressions of pious and fervent admiration for the life-giving properties of its water. It rises in the Brahmagiri, near Talakaveri in Coorg, and flows generally south-eastwards across the plateau, making great falls as it descends the Eastern Ghats, and traverses the Carnatic lowland past Trichinopoly and Tanjore to the Bay which it enters by a number of distributaries in the district of Tanjore. After a tortuous course in Coorg over a rocky bed bordered by high banks covered with luxuriant vegetation, it enters Mysore state and passes through a narrow gorge with a fall of 60 to 80 feet in the rapids of Chunchankatte, after which it widens out. The river twice forks into two streams, only to reunite a few miles farther on, thus forming two islands—Seringapatam and Śivasamudram—fifty miles apart. The celebrated falls of Śivasamudram have been harnessed to supply electrical power to the Kolar Gold Fields over a hundred miles distant. The enterprise was the first of its kind in India and, at the time of its inception, involved one of the longest lines of high tension electric transmission in the world. The Kaveri receives a number of tributaries in its course across Mysore, the most important being the Kabbani, the Hemavati and the Arkavati. In the plain, the course of the river is strongly controlled by the structure of the country as is well shown by its straight course and acute bends. After the confluence of the Bhavani, it changes its southern for a south-eastern direction and then takes an east-south-easterly course before forking a third time to form the island of Śrirangam. Immediately below Śrirangam, the river divides into two, the Coleroon and the Kaveri, the latter repeatedly branching and thus ramifying over the entire surface of the Tanjore delta. The waters of the Kaveri are used extensively for irrigation in Mysore state and Coimbatore and Trichinopoly districts, but it is in Tanjore that they are used to the fullest. The problem of utilizing the flood waters of the Kaveri for irrigation was tackled from very early times by successive Chola monarchs though not with the efficiency commanded by modern engineering.
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Passing over less important rivers, we may note that the Tambraparni, rising amongst the wooded hills of the southern ghats and benefiting from both the monsoons, forms a life-line for agriculture in the Tinnevelly district. At its mouth in the Gulf of Mannar are the famous pearl fisheries often described by travellers from other countries.
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Turning now to the rivers draining on the west, the remarkably straight trend of the valleys and the precipitous rise of the banks of Narmada and Tapti as well as the exceptional course of their drainage are the results of a geological accident.
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The Narmada (Namnadios in the Periplus and Namados to Ptolemy) is one of the seven sacred rivers of India and rises on the summit of the plateau of Amarkantak at the north-eastern apex of the Satpura range in Rewah in Central India. It runs a course of 801 miles before entering the Gulf of Cambay by a wide estuary 17 miles across below Broach, the Bharukaccha of ancient fame. The river is estimated to drain an area of about 36,000 square miles lying principally to the south of it and comprising the northern portion of the Satpura plateau. Its rocky bed and liability to rapid floods render the river useless for navigation, and its high banks are an obstacle to irrigation. It can be used by small craft up to Broach, 30 miles from its mouth, though the influence of the tide reaches up to 55 miles.
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The Tapti (436 miles in length), rising on the Satpura plateau near Multai, flows through a straight and steep-sided valley, locally opening out to form wide alluvial plains, to the Gulf of Cambay which it joins by an estuary. Its banks are too high (30 to 60 feet) for the water to be used for irrigation while the frequent rocky ridges crossing the river render navigation impossible except for the last 20 miles of its course. The Khandesh plain in the middle Tapti valley is the most northern section of the Deccan; stretching for 150 miles east to west it is an extensive area of rich alluvial black soil, a land of large and prosperous towns. Physically it merges eastward into the Nagpur plain characterized by the same type of land use. The rugged hilly and forested regions adjoining the river were breeding-grounds for wild elephants until about the seventeenth century.
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The Gulf of Cambay was once frequented by Arab mariners, and in the early days Broach was more prominent than the better port of Surat which rose only after the silting up of the Narmada estuary and the advent of the European traders who first came to India round the Cape of Good Hope. Besides the estuarine mouths of the rivers, there are a number of real island harbours—Diu, Daman, Bombay. The west coast of the peninsula from Daman southwards to Trivandrum possesses a unity of structure, relief, and climate. On details of relief it can be divided into two halves—the northern half being the Konkan coast and the southern the Malabar coast. The term Konkan is now applied to the strip of country below the ghats south of the Damanganga river up to North Kanara. It varies from 20 to 50 miles in width and is intercepted by hills and cliffs jutting into the sea from the ghats, and numbers of little streams forming rapid torrents during the rains but dwindling to insignificant dimensions in the dry weather. Annual floods have carved deep tidal creeks in their mouths which form valuable highways for traffic. These westward-flowing streams become larger in the extreme south, and one of them, the Sharavati, plunges 850 feet downward from the mountains to form the celebrated Gersoppa falls. The coastal plain is thus altogether a difficult country to traverse; where flat it is fertile and capable of yielding valuable crops of rice.
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The Malabar coast differs from the Konkan in many ways. The ghats recede much farther from the sea and the coastal strip is broader, and the Palghat gap relieves the country from the more or less complete isolation of the Konkan tracts and makes for easy communication with the Carnatic plain. The long, firm coastline of Bombay is lost here and replaced by inlets and backwaters that break across the dividing line of sea and shore creating the beautiful, and also typical, coastal scenery of Malabar. The backwaters, which are elongated parallel to the coast, provide easy and natural communication from north to south. The seaward scarp of the ghats has been opened up for the cultivation of tea, coffee, cardamom and cinchona; and natural forests of great commercial value containing bamboos, blackwood and teak grow with special luxuriance.
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'The low-lying plains bordering the sea throughout the whole length of western India from Kathiawar promontory to Cape Comorin represented in medieval ages most of the wealth and strength of India, and are still noted for their great fertility. Ancient ports and factories (Arab, Portuguese, and Dutch) are to be found scattered along the coastline, and amid the palm groves of Malabar are many relics of the days when the commerce of the East centred on this coast.' Historically, there has been a striking contrast between the relative political isolation of this coastal country from the rest of India and its generally active contact by sea with the nations of the outside world—the Roman empire, Arabs, Chinese, Portuguese and the rest.
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The lowland that interposes between the Eastern Ghats and the shore of the Bay of Bengal extends with little variation from the Mahanadi to Cape Comorin. The maritime strip varies at first from 50 to 100 miles in width, but becomes broader as the ghats recede from the coast about 16°N. Everywhere there is the same narrow strip of sandy foreshore leading to a wide vista of green rice-crops and palm growth, the same background of forest-clad hills now receding into misty distance, now breaking the dead monotony of the surf-beaten coast with bold, bleak headlands, with large lagoons here and there, not unlike the backwaters of the Malabar coast, with wide expanses of sandbanks and shallows opposite the deltaic mouths of rivers which render close approach to the ports impossible to ships of any size. Where no such silt formations exist, the open roadsteads usually afford fair and close anchorage as at Cuddalore and Cocanada and, until they were developed recently into artificial harbours, at Madras and Vizagapatam.
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The coast of the Northern Circars, the historic Golconda coast, recalls in a measure some of the features of the west coast—the parallelism between the ghats and the coastline, the nearness of the edge of the ghats to the sea which restricts the coastal lowland to a narrow elongated strip, with spurs from the ghats descending the scarp face and jutting out to sea to end in headlands like the Dolphin's Nose. The ghats are fairly densely clothed with forest while the flat lowland is covered with scrub jungle. A succession of short streams descend the ghats and run directly out to sea. Important features of this region are the Chilka lake and the double delta of the Godāvari and Krishna embracing the Colair lake.
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Except in the immediate neighbourhood of the short rivers, the coastal strip is for the most part covered with low-level laterite, red gravel, and clay, and is therefore not very productive. But the conditions change thoroughly when the deltas of the Godāvari and Krishna are reached. With their immense quantities of water and of rich black mud drawn largely from the fertile lava of the trap area, they have created a double delta extending over a million acres round the 300 square miles of the Colair depression. The delta country is a regular granary of rice and produces many other valuable crops like tobacco, cotton and sugarcane. The coast of the delta was the site of some of the earliest settlements of Europeans in India, the Dutch, French and English having all established factories there; the channels of the rivers which led to these have since largely silted up.
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Half lake, half swamp, Lake Colair is the only large natural freshwater lake in coastal Andhra. Originally a part of the Bay it has been cut off from it by the growth of the two river deltas which, growing year after year, pushed out farther and farther into the sea until the northern end of the one joined the southern extremity of the other. Lake Colair is known to history as Kolanu, and its chieftains, the Sarōnāthas, played a fairly prominent part in the history of the Andhra country.
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In the Coromandel area the ghats, as noted already, turn away from the coast to converge with the Western Ghats in the Nilgiris. There are offshoots like the Javadi, Shevaroy, Pachaimalai, and so on, which retain something of the plateau aspect; but the Carnatic or the Tamil plain increases in width steadily southwards until in the Kaveri basin it stretches for about 170 miles. This plain presents a great contrast to the other parts of the coastal plains and to the Deccan plateau in topography, in climate and in history. This is the real old India of the South, the land where all the great historical kingdoms of South India fixed their capitals, ‘the land of unnumbered temples, of indigenous arts and of almost prehistoric industries’. Here artificial irrigation was practised from remote antiquity, and the irrigation system of the fertile river belt between Karûr and Tanjore must be almost as old as agriculture itself.
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S. L. HORA: *Outlines of Field Sciences of India* (Science Congress Association) *The Imperial Gazetteer of India*, Vols. I-IV (Oxford, 1909) L. W. LYDE: *The Continent of Asia* (Macmillan) SIR J. H. MACKINDER: ‘The Sub-Continent of India’ (*Cambridge History of India*, Vol. I) D. N. WADIA: *Geology of India* (Macmillan)