Оңтүстік Үндістанның Карнатик аймағы

Geographic region of southern India

The Carnatic region is the peninsular South Indian region between the Eastern Ghats and the Bay of Bengal, in the erstwhile Madras Presidency and in the modern Indian states of Tamil Nadu and southern coastal Andhra Pradesh. During the British era, demarcation was different and the region included current day Karnataka and the whole region south of the Deccan.

A number of theories exist as to the derivation of the term Carnatic or Karnatic. According to Bishop Robert Caldwell, in his Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages, the term is derived from Kar, "black", and nadu, "country", i. e. "the black country", which refers to the black soil prevalent on the plateau of the Southern Deccan. When the English settled on the East Coast, all South India, from the river Krishna to Cape Comorin, was under the rule of a Kanarese dynasty, reigning at Vijayanagar, and was known as the Karnataka Realm. Hence the name "Carnatic" has come to be popularly applied to the coastal plains south of Madras, although these are Tamil speaking
districts and quite outside the Kanarese country proper.

The region that was named Carnatic or Karnatak (Kannada, Karnata, Karnatakadesa) by Europeans lies between the Eastern Ghats and the Coromandel Coast in the presidency of Madras. famous later as a centre of Tamil literature. The Chola kingdom, which four centuries before Christ had been recognized as independent by the Maurya king Ashoka, had for its chief port Kaviripaddinam at the mouth of the Kauvery, every vestige of which is now buried in the sand. Tamil literature (particularly Iyal, in prose and poetry) contains in itself vast amounts of knowledge on Carnatic music. Starting from the earliest Tamil literature available today (around 200 BC), it is possible to trace the various forms of music (Isai) that had existed in different periods and the way it has transformed into today's Carnatic music, by absorbing techniques from other Indian forms of music. For the first two centuries after Christ, a large sea borne trade was carried on between the Roman Empire and the Tamil kingdoms; but after Caracalla's massacre at Alexandria in A. D. 215, this ceased, and with it all intercourse with Europe for centuries also. Henceforward, until the 9th century, the history of the country is illustrated only by occasional and broken lights. The 4th century saw the rise of the Pallava power, which for some 400 years encroached on, without extinguishing, the Tamil kingdoms. When in A. D. 640 the Chinese traveller Hsuan Tsang visited Kanchi (Conjevaram), the capital of the Pallava king, he learned that the kingdom of Chola (Chu li ya) embraced but a small territory, wild, and inhabited by a scanty and fierce population; in the Pandya kingdom (Malakuta), which was under Pallava suzerainty, literature was dead, Buddhism all but extinct, while Hinduism and the naked Jain saints divided the religious allegiance of the people, and the pearl fisheries continued to flourish. The power of the Pallava kings was shaken by the victory of Vikramaditya Chalukya in AD 740, and shattered by Aditya Chola at the close of the 9th century. From this time onward, the inscriptional records are abundant. The Chola Dynasty, which in the 9th century had been weak, now revived, its power culminating in the victories of Rajaraja the Great, who defeated the Chalukyas after a four years war, and, about AD 994, forced the Pandya kings to become his tributaries. A magnificent temple at Tanjore, once his capital, preserves the records of his victories engraved upon its walls. His career of conquest was continued by his son Rajendra Choladeva I, self styled Gangaikonda owing to his victorious advance to the Ganges, who succeeded to the throne in AD 1018. The ruins of the new capital which he built, called Gangaikonda Cholapuram, still stand in a desolate region of the Trichinopoly district. His successors continued the eternal wars with the Chalukyas and other dynasties, and the Chola power continued in the ascendant until the death of Kulottunga Chola III in 1278, when a disputed succession caused its downfall and gave the Pandyas the opportunity of gaining for a few years the upper hand in the south. In 1310, however, the invasion under Malik Kafur overwhelmed the Hindu states of southern India in a common ruin. Though crushed, however, they were not extinguished; a period of anarchy followed, the struggle between the Chola kings and the Mussulmans issuing in the establishment at Kanchi of a usurping Hindu dynasty which ruled till the end of the 14th century, while in 1365 a branch of the Pandyas succeeded in re establishing itself in part of the kingdom of Madurai, where it survived till 1623. At the beginning of the 15th century, the whole country had come under the rule of the kings of Vijayanagar; but in the anarchy that followed the overthrow of the Vijayanagar empire by the Mussulmans in the 16th century, the Hindu viceroys (Nayaks) established in Madurai, Tanjore and Kanchi made themselves independent, only in their turn to become tributary to the kings of Golconda and Bijapur, who divided the Carnatic between them.