Dravidian

The Dravidian group includes the Telugus, Tamils, Kannadigas and Malayalis, with smaller peoples such as the Gonds, Tuluvas and Kodavas, and the Brahui far to the northwest in Baluchistan. Proto-Dravidian may go back to the third millennium BC, and the Dravidian languages remained distinct from the Indo-Aryan tongues of the north.

In the early fourteenth century Delhi Sultanate raids shook the south. The brothers Harihara I and Bukka Raya I founded the Vijayanagara Empire in 1336, which under Krishnadevaraya (1509–1529) held primacy across the peninsula. The Deccan sultanates, successors to the Bahmani Sultanate of 1347, defeated it at Talikota in 1565, and Nayak rulers inherited its lands.