The term 'south India' denotes that portion of peninsular India beneath the Krishna River and the watershed of its major tributary, the Tungabhadra. The major early source of civilizational elements within the macroregion defined was the Tamil plain. The northernmost of the Tamil plain was Tondaimandalam, south of this was the territory called 'Naduvil-nadu', and, below this, in the Kaveri basin, Cholamandalam. The southern portion of the peninsula shares with the northern, Deccan, portion a peninsular configuration which emphasizes the sea and contact beyond the sub-continent by means of it. From an early time until perhaps the fourteenth century, the sea offered the south Indians opportunities for both trade and piracy. The Coromandel plain was the major core region of south India, extending from the tip of the peninsula to the northern edge of the broad delta of the Godavari and Krishna rivers. Irrigated rice culture permitted a high degree of routinization of cultivation p.

Urbanism is a distinctive feature of the economic history of later medieval south India. The Vijayanagara state was based upon heavily fortified administrative centres often under the control of warriors and Brahmans who were strangers to the place. Brahmadeyas of the Chola period were settlements of great size and wealth under the control of an assembly of Brahmans. Temples of the post-Chola period became centres of pilgrimage necessitating a variety of facilities seldom before demanded. Kānci was a focal point for many of the sectarian and caste activities of the central Tamil plain just as Tirupati was for the northern portions of the plain and as Palni, Nanjunad, and Perur for the southern and western parts of the interior upland of the macro-region. An independent stimulus to urban development was military. Vijayanagara, the capital city of the empire from 1340 to 1565, was one of the greatest fortified cities of all of India.