Deccan definition
A plateau of south-central India between the Eastern Ghats and the Western Ghats. The name is also used for the entire Indian peninsula south of the Narmada River.
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Pandharpur is the most popular place of pilgrimage in the Deccan, its celebrated temple being dedicated to Vithoba, a form of Vishnu.
Geologically considered, the country may be divided into three regions - a central, and the largest, comprising the whole width of the Aravalli system, formed of very old sub-metamorphic and gneissic rocks; an eastern region, with sharply defined boundary, along which the most ancient formations are abruptly replaced by the great basin of the Vindhyan strata, or are overlaid by the still more extensive spread of the Deccan trap, forming the plateau of Malwa; and a western region, of very ill-defined margin, in which, besides some rocks of undetermined age, it is more or less known or suspected that Tertiary and Secondary strata stretch across from Sind, beneath the sands of the desert, towards the flanks of the Aravallis.
In the southern region of unfolded beds are found the lavas of the " harras " of Arabia, and in India the extensive flows of the Deccan Trap. In the central folded belt lie the great volcanoes, now mostly extinct, of Asia Minor, Armenia, Persia and Baluchistan.
This large tract, extending from the Arabian Sea on the west to the Satpura mountains in the north, comprises a good part of western and central India, including the modern provinces of the Konkan, Khandesh, Berar, the British Deccan, part of Nagpur, and about half the nizam's Deccan.
It was against the Mahommedan king of Bijapur in the Deccan that Sivaji, the hero of Mahratta history, first rebelled in 1657.