The map will contain information on settlements, kingdoms, religious, as well as cultural and linguistic influences on the region through history.
Their first work will start from Tamil Nadu Pradesh and Kerala in south India, which are well known for numbers of historic relics, and then Andra Pradesh and Karnataka in the second phrase.
A team has mapped the Pudukottai region of Tamil Nadu in a pilot study.
"The Pudukottai region pilot study has thrown open great potential for such a study. If the remaining parts of South India are mapped similarly, the atlas will serve as a launching pad for all future historical and cultural research in the region," said C. Subramanian, vice-chancellor of Tamil University, one of the five institutions.
The others in the project are the Mahatma Gandhi University, the Mangalore University and the Hyderabad University and French Institute in Pondicherry.
The database will be open to scholars and available on-line as well as in CDs.
