ABSTRACT
The most important feature of the traditional Indian house, whether in village or in town, is not the house itself, but the courtyard, where most of a family's life is lived. The tightly nucleated village in eastern India is very seldom a shapeless agglomerate, although the need for raising the homestead area by earth work militates against a very regular, rectangular settlement pattern. In traditional rural housing, however, the sun is more important than ventilation, except in the room called the baithak, where men congregate to gossip. The transition between house types is often sharp and dramatic. One significant, closed, secure courtyard termed a nalukettu evolved in the Nair houses in south India. The kudam is always placed to the right as one enters the house. In the Deccan peninsula one encounters isolated homesteads in the wooded source regions of the Krishna and Bhima rivers, the Nilgjris, the Malnad districts of Karnataka and the highland areas of Kerala.
