BADEGA, n.p. The Tamil Vaḍagar, i.e. 'Northerners.' The name has at least two specific applications:
a. To the Telegu people who invaded the Tamil country from the kingdom of Vijayanagara (the [Bisnaga] or [Narsinga] of the Portuguese and old travellers) during the later Middle Ages, but especially in the 16th century. This word first occurs in the letters of St. Francis Xavier (1544), whose Parava converts on the Tinnevelly Coast were much oppressed by these people. The Badega language of Lucena, and other writers regarding that time, is the Telegu. The Badagas of St. Fr. Xavier's time were in fact the emissaries of the Nāyaka rulers of Madura, using violence to exact tribute for those rulers, whilst the Portuguese had conferred on the Paravas "the somewhat dangerous privilege of being Portuguese subjects."—See Caldwell, H. of Tinnevelly, 69 seqq.
1544.—"Ego ad Comorinum Promontorium contendo eòque naviculas deduco xx. cibariis onustas, ut miseris illis subveniam Neophytis, qui Bagadarum (read Badagarum) acerrimorum Christiani nominis hostium terrore perculsi, relictis vicis, in desertas insulas se abdiderunt."—S. F. Xav. Epistt. I. vi., ed. 1677.
1572.—"Gens est in regno Bisnagae quos Badagas vocant."—E. Acosta, 4 b.
1737.—"In eâ parte missionis Carnatensis in quâ Telougou, ut aiunt, lingua viget, seu inter Badagos, quinque annos versatus sum; neque quamdiu viguerunt vires ab illâ dilectissimâ et sanctissimâ Missione Pudecherium veni."—In Norbert, iii. 230.
1875.—"Mr C. P. Brown informs me that the early French missionaries in the Guntur country wrote a vocabulary 'de la langue Talenga, dite vulgairement le Badega."—Bp. Caldwell, Dravidian Grammar, Intr. p. 33.
b. To one of the races occupying the Nilgiri Hills, speaking an old Canarese dialect, and being apparently a Canarese colony, long separated from the parent stock.—(See Bp. Caldwell's Grammar, 2nd ed., pp. 34, 125, &c.) [The best recent account of this people is that by Mr Thurston in Bulletin of the Madras Museum, vol. ii. No. 1.] The name of these people is usually in English corrupted to Burghers.
BADGEER, s. P. bād-gīr, 'wind-catch.' An arrangement acting as a windsail to bring the wind down into a house; it is common in Persia and in Sind. [It is the Bādhanj of Arabia, and the Malkaf of Egypt (Burton, Ar. Nights, i. 237; Lane, Mod. Egypt, i. 23.]
1298.—"The heat is tremendous (at Hormus), and on that account the houses are built with ventilators (ventiers) to catch the wind. These ventilators are placed on the side from which the wind comes, and they bring the wind down into the house to cool it."—Marco Polo, ii. 450.
[1598.—A similar arrangement at the same place is described by Linschoten, i. 51, Hak. Soc.]