state of India, located on the western coast of the subcontinent. It has an area of 74,051 square miles (191,791 square kilometres). It is bounded by the states of Goa and Mahārāshtra to the north, Andhra Pradesh to the east, Tamil Nādu to the southeast, and Kerala to the south and by the Arabian Sea to the west. The state extends for about 420 miles (676 kilometres) from north to south and for about 300 miles from east to west. It has a coastline 200 miles long. The capital is Bangalore, near the southeastern border.

Before the independence of India in 1947, Mysore was a prosperous and progressive but landlocked princely state, with an area of less than 30,000 square miles, located on the Karnātaka Plateau. The transfer of additional territories to the state in 1953 and 1956 united the Kannaḍa (Kannada language)- (or Kanarese-) speaking peoples, gave the state an outlet to the sea, and greatly extended its boundaries. The state took its present name in 1973. It now coincides approximately with the area in which Kannaḍa is spoken. Karnātaka is a Kannaḍa name meaning “Lofty Land.”

Karnātaka has abundant hydroelectric power and extensive forests. It is also India's chief source of gold and silver and coffee, and it provides the bulk of the world's supply of sandalwood.

Physiographically, Karnātaka is divided into four distinct regions—the coastal plain, the hill ranges (the Western Ghāts), the Karnātaka Plateau to the east, and the black cotton-growing soil tract to the northwest. The coastal plain represents a continuation of the Malabār Coast and experiences heavy rainfall from the southwest monsoon during June through September. Coastal sand dunes give place inland to small alluvial plains with coconut-fringed lagoons. The coast is difficult to access, except by sea. To the east the land rises sharply to the slopes of the Western Ghāts, which have an average height of 2,500 to 3,000 feet (760 to 915 metres) above sea level. The forested upland terrain of the Ghāts is known as Malnād; the region is also a watershed, and from its crest numerous swift streams flow to the plains, including the Sharāvati River, which is associated with the Jog (Gersoppa) Falls (830 feet 【253 metres】 in height). Other streams flow over the undulating Karnātaka Plateau (Karnataka Plateau), which slopes gently eastward. The plateau region has an average height of about 1,500 feet above sea level; its soils are generally porous and infertile. The basins of its rivers, however, which include the Kāveri (Cauvery) to the south and the Tungabhadra, which is a tributary of the Krishna River, to the north, are loamy and of some fertility. From early times the smaller streams have been dammed to form irrigation reservoirs; in recent times much hydroelectric-power development has taken place. In the northwestern part of the state, underlying volcanic rock produces a soil known as regur, the humus-rich, black cotton-growing soil of India.

Ethnologically, the population of Karnātaka is predominantly Dravidian. The Dravidians were the original inhabitants of India and are related to the peoples of the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, and Madagascar. Over the centuries, however, much intermixture with other races has occurred. In the north of the state, Indic traits, mixed with Dravidian, occur. Some Anglo-Indians, representing a mixture of European and Dravidian, are occasionally encountered, particularly in Bangalore.

Kannaḍa, spoken by more than 70 percent of the population, is the official state language. Hindustānī (a mixture of Hindi and Urdū) is often used in trade and business. Toward the borders of the state, other languages, such as Tamil, Telugu, Marāṭhī, and Koṅkaṇī, are also spoken. Koṅkaṇī is associated particularly with the city of Mangalore. The major religion is Hinduism, but Jainism and Buddhism—once widespread—still survive. Small percentages of the population follow Islām and Christianity.

Although about three-quarters of the population is rural, the trend toward urbanization is becoming more marked as industrialization increases. The major cities are Bangalore, the capital, and Mysore. Other important towns are Hubli-Dhārwād, Mangalore, Belgaum, Gulbarga, Bellary, Dāvangere, Bijāpur, Shimoga, and Bhadrāvati.

Agriculture is the occupation of 80 percent of the population. The coastal plain is intensively cultivated, with rice grown as a food crop and sugarcane as a cash crop. The second and third major food crops after rice are jowar (sorghum) and ragi (millet). Other cash crops are cashews, cardamom, betel (areca) nut, and grapes. Coffee and tea plantations occupy the cool slopes of the Western Ghāts. In the eastern region, irrigation makes possible the cultivation of sugarcane, a little rubber, and such fruits as bananas and oranges. The black soil of the northwest supports cotton, oilseeds, and peanuts (groundnuts).

The forests of the Malnād region in the west produce teak, sandalwood, bamboo, and such other products as tanning dyes, gums, and lac (a resinous substance used in the manufacture of varnishes). Other trees include eucalyptus and rosewood. Oil processed from sandalwood at Mysore city is a leading state export.

In places, the Precambrian rocks of Karnātaka, which are at least 570 million years old, are highly mineralized. Karnātaka is the largest producer of chromite in India; it is also one of only two states in India (the other being Tamil Nādu) producing magnesite. High-grade iron ore reserves are largely located in Chikmagalūr and Chitradurga districts; mica, copper ore, bauxite, garnet, and emery are obtained in small quantities. All India's gold derives from the region of the Kolār Gold Fields. The principal gold mines, now nationalized, are up to 9,000 feet deep.

The mineral resources of the state provide the basis for the iron and steel industry at Bhadrāvati and heavy engineering works at Bangalore. Other industries in the state include cotton milling, sugar processing, and the manufacture of textiles, food products, electrical machinery, fertilizers, cement, and paper. Both Mysore city and Bangalore have old established silk industries producing most of India's mulberry silk.

Karnātaka has sufficient hydroelectric power to supply surplus energy to neighbouring states. The Sharāvati project near Jog Falls is the largest of several hydroelectric plants that provide power to Karnātaka's industries.

The obstacle formed by the Western Ghāts has prevented the building of railroads linking the ports to the plateau in the interior. Bangalore, in the southeast, is the main focus of rail transportation. The port of Mangalore, in the southwest, is connected with Bombay through the state of Kerala by tracks running parallel to the coast.

The import and export trade relies primarily on road transport, but many roads in the western part of the state become impassable during the rainy season. National highways run from Bangalore east to Madras, north to Hyderābād, northwest to Bombay, and west through Hassan to the coast of Mangalore. Airports are located at Bangalore, Belgaum, and Mangalore.

The state is divided into 19 districts. The head of state is the governor, who is appointed by the president of India. The bicameral legislature consists of a Legislative Assembly (Vidhān Sabhā) of directly elected members and a Legislative Council (Vidhān Parishad). The chief minister is assisted by a Council of Ministers. The state High Court is subordinate to the Supreme Court in New Delhi; it consists of a chief justice and several additional judges, who are appointed by the president of India in consultation with the chief justice of India and the governor of the state. There are also district and subordinate courts. A public service commission, whose members are appointed by the governor, functions in an advisory capacity.

The state, which has a population that is about two-fifths literate, is one of the educationally advanced states of India. There are a large number of schools and educational institutions, including the University of Mysore at Mysore, the Karnātak University at Dhārwād, and the Gulbarga University, the Mangalore University, Bangalore University, the University of Agricultural Sciences, and the Indian Institute of Science, all at Bangalore. Nearly half of the schools and institutions are managed by the government, and the remainder by local boards and private bodies. Compulsory free primary education is provided in most towns and villages in the state.

The Employees State Insurance Scheme covers sickness, maternity, and employment injury risks and provides free medical treatment to factory workers and their families in Bangalore. Welfare schemes are run by the government for tribal and other groups. The State Social Welfare Board also sponsors family welfare centres.

Karnātaka possesses a rich cultural heritage, compounded by the contributions of successive dynasties, which have fostered various religions and philosophies, which, in turn, have influenced literature, architecture, folklore, music, painting, and minor arts.

The town of Sravana Belgola, 56 miles from Mysore, contains notable examples of Mauryan architecture, as well as a giant stone figure, believed to be 1,000 years old, of Bāhubali (Gommateśvara), the Jaina saint. Huge monolithic Jaina statues are peculiar to the Kannaḍa culture. The influence of the Cālukya (Chalukya) and the Pallava dynasties is still apparent in temple architecture dating from the 7th century AD.

The name Mysore (from the Hindu word for “buffalo town”) derives from the destruction of the buffalo-demon Mahiṣāsura by the goddess Cāmuṇḍā. The prehistory of Mysore is lost in legends that concern the struggle that took place in southern India between invading Aryan peoples and the original inhabitants; in legendary form this struggle is represented as a conflict between devils and demons on the one hand and gods and goddesses on the other. The subsequent history of the region deals mainly with the princely state of Mysore as it was before 1953, for no dynasty succeeded in ruling the whole region occupied by the Kannaḍa-speaking peoples.

After the reign of Aśoka, the emperor of Maurya in the mid-3rd century BC, the principal dynasties in the area of Mysore were the Kadambas of Banavasi, the Western Gaṅgas (who were in power from the 3rd to the 11th century AD), the Bānas, and other feudatories of the Pallava dynasty, which ruled from about the 4th to the 9th century. The rich lands of the upper Tungabhadra region and the land between that river and the Krishna River were taken from the Kadambas in the 6th century by a central Karnātaka dynasty, the Cālukyas (Chalukya dynasty). Their efforts and those of their competitors of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa Dynasty to unite the plateau and exploit the softer lands of the coastal plains enriched Mysore but led to reprisals from the Tamils to the east and south. By the 12th century the Hoysaḷa dynasty (Hoysala dynasty) had absorbed Gaṅgavāḍi (as the state of Mysore was then called); but after the Hoysaḷas had been obliged to submit to the sultan of Delhi, Mysore gradually came under the sway of the state of Vijayanagar, whose capital of the same name stood on the site now partly occupied by the village of Hampi on the Tungabhadra River in contemporary Karnātaka. In the latter part of the 16th century the Vijayanagar empire faded, giving place to Mughal (Mughal Dynasty) power north of the Tungabhadra River and to the rajas of Mysore in the south. In the 17th century the wadiyars (“rulers”) of Mysore profited from the conflict between the Mughal Empire and the Marāṭhās in western India, as well as from the internal power struggles that occurred in the Mughal Empire after the death (1707) of Aurangzeb, to expand their rule. In 1610 the wadiyar of Mysore seized Seringapatam; later, Bangalore was also acquired and wadiyar power consolidated. Later, maladministration at home and interference in wars of succession in the plains led to the usurpation of power in 1761 by the military adventurer Ḥaidar ʿAlī (Hyder Ali). His invasions of Malabār and the Karnātaka plains extended Mysore's dominion but eventually led, after the resulting Mysore Wars, to the death of his colourful and energetic son Tīpū Sultān in 1799 and to the conquest of Mysore by the British, who sponsored the restoration of wadiyar rule. Mysore was governed by a British commissioner from 1831 to 1881, when administration was once again restored to the wadiyars. The last of the wadiyars became governor of the state after the territorial reorganizations of 1953 and 1956. The state was renamed Karnātaka in 1973.