Originally posted by shandj
select table_name, column_name from user_tab_columns where table_name like 'Viewname';
This doesn't tell you anything about underlyning tables - the TABLE_NAME in the above query is in fact the name of the view 'Viewname'.

Maybe you could use any variant of the following:

SELECT referenced_name FROM DBA_DEPENDENCIES
WHERE owner='VIEW_OWNER'
AND name = 'MY_VIEW'
AND referenced_type = 'TABLE';

Although the query itself might be terribly slow and inefficient.