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Mist wraps itself around the Blue Mountains, cooling the spice covered hills of the South... a lone
tusker sounds a bugle call by a tranquil lake... but even cicadas can't be heard in a silent valley.
South India is a geographic and linguistic-cultural region of India. Geographically, South India traditionally includes the entire Indian Peninsula south of the Satpura and Vindhya ranges and Narmada River, encompassing the Deccan plateau (from the Sanskrit word dakshina, meaning south), the Eastern and Western Ghats, and the coasts between the Ghats and the sea.
As a linguistic-cultural and political region, South India consists of the five south Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Goa,Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu, and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Pondicherry & Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Natives of these states are referred
t
o as South Indians.
South India is also called Dakshina Nad (Dakshina = South + Nad = land), Dravida Nad (Dravida = Dravidian + Nad = land), or simply Dravida. Culturally and linguistically South
India is distinguished as the home of the Dravidians, but not exclusively so; ethnic Dravidians also live in parts of eastern and central India, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia, and some non-Dravidian peoples (for example the Konkani people and other Indo-Aryans) also make their home in South India and have adopted the local language.
