A brief history of the Deccan Plateau

The Deccan Plateau is a plateau that is located in south-central India and covers four states, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Karnataka and bits of Tamilnadu and Kerala and it is bordered in the west by the Western Ghats and in the east by the Eastern Ghats and it is bordered further west by the Arabian Sea and further east by the Bay of Bengal. It covers an area of approximately 422,000 km.

In the Vedas the area that is now known as the Deccan Plateau is referred to as Dakshinapatha. The name is most likely derived from the Sanskrit words “Dakshina” which means southern and “Patha” which means “the way” or “the road” and read together it would mean the southern path or the southern way and that to some extent tells us that the plateau was used as a road to the south.

While there are very little records of indigenous ancient kingdoms in the Plateau, it would be fair to surmise that it came under the dominion of the Mauryan Empire, but there may also have been some influences from the Kalinga Empire which was located along the Bay of Bengal.

Historical records clearly indicate that there was friction between both the empires and it would eventually prompt the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka to invade the kingdom of Kalinga, a war that neither kingdom won and a war that devastated both the Mauryan Empire and the Kalinga Empire and created a massive exodus eastwards, caused by those fleeing the war and its aftermath, towards South East Asia.

The collapse of the Mauryan Empire led to the formation of the first indigenous kingdom in the Deccan Plateau, the Satavahana Dynasty, a dynasty that flourished between 2 BC or BCE to 3 AD or CE. and covered both Andhra Pradesh and Telengana  and various parts of Maharashtra and was succeeded by various other smaller Hindu Kingdoms, until the Indo-Scythian era, which began following the Scythian migration into the subcontinent which started at about 2 BC or BCE and continued up to about 4 AD or CE. According to most sources the kingdoms in the plateau then became vassals of the Kushan Kings.

The contemporary history of the plateau starts with the formation of the Deccan Sultanates, there were initially five different sultanates that contested the Deccan, and it culminated in a power struggle between the three remaining sultanates and the Mughals and ends with the rise of the Maratha Empire that would eventually gain control of the Plateau. 

Copyright © 2020 by Dyarne Ward and Kathiresan Ramachanderam