A narrow coastal lowland rises quickly to the Western Ghats which mark the western edge of the Deccan Plateau. The mountains provide the source waters for the Krishna and its tributary, the Tungabhadra, and other rivers such as the Kaueri. Karnataka's southeast is lined by the Eastern Ghats and the state's eastern bulge includes most of the Mysore Plateau. The elevation falls to the east manifested by two of the nation's largest lakes, both reservoirs, one on the Tungabhadra, the other on the Kaveri, and also more naturally at Kaveri Falls.
Almost two in three speakers speak Kannada as their first language. Urdu is spoken by one in ten. Telegu and Marathi are spoken by less than that portion but probably more than five percent each, in each case near the states where they predominate: Andhra Pradesh(1) and Maharashtra. Hindi is a mother tongue for more than one in ten and is also commonly learned as a second language. The Urdu speakers are mostly Moslem and the rest mostly Hindu. Bangalore, the state capital--and a world center for information technology--is the area's pre-eminent city. Maisuru(2) is the second most important.
People arrived in southern India within a relatively short time of leaving Africa. Kannada speakers left written records from 1400 years ago, so the language is at least that old. The modern form is more recent, dating from after Portuguese added its influence to the older Sanskrit one. In the first millenium B.C.E., the Hindu religion reached the Deccan, syncretically absorbing indiginous religions. This area participated in the old religion's evolution(3) and in the rise and nibbana (extinguishing) of its chief rival, Buddhism.(4) Islam arrived in the 13th century and gained adherants as Moslem political control again advanced southward. With the new relgion came linguistic change: Urdu became the lingua franca of the Moghul Empire and increasingly the language of all India's Moslems.
(1) Pradesh means state.
(2) Formerly spelled Mysore.
(3) Strict Vedic traditions were inbitially opposed to Shavism and Vaishnism but are now integral to Hinduism.
(4) Jainism also spread south, only to decline and virtually disapper there by early in the last millenium.