The ancient, rigid landmass of southern India, a fragment of Gondwana made of Precambrian crystalline rocks, that acted as a stable foreland against which the Himalayas were folded.
- A part of the old Gondwana supercontinent; it is a craton (a stable continental block) of Archaean gneisses and granites, among the oldest rocks on Earth.
- Tectonically stable and rigid; it does not buckle into folds but breaks into blocks (block faulting), producing the rift valleys of the Narmada and Tapi.
- Acted as the rigid resistant block towards which the sediments of the Tethys Sea were compressed and folded to raise the Himalayas after India drifted north and collided with Asia.
- Slopes generally from west to east, so most major Peninsular rivers flow eastward to the Bay of Bengal.
- The Deccan Trap, vast Cretaceous basalt lava flows, covers much of its north-western part and weathers into black cotton soil.
The Gondwana origin, the rigid-block (craton) nature, block faulting and rift valleys, and the role as the foreland against which the Himalayas rose are recurring geomorphology facts.
The Peninsular Block is rigid and breaks (block faulting, rifts) rather than folding; the Himalayas are young fold mountains. Both descend from the same continental drift event but behaved very differently.
Ancient rigid Gondwana craton of south India; stable, block-faulted, the foreland against which the Himalayas were folded.