COUNTRY, adj. This term is used colloquially, and in trade, as an adjective to distinguish articles produced in India (generally with a sub-indication of disparagement), from such as are imported, and especially imported from Europe. Indeed [Europe] (q.v.) was, and still occasionally is, used as the contrary adjective. Thus, 'country harness' is opposed to 'Europe harness'; 'country-born' people are persons of European descent, but born in India; 'country horses' are Indian-bred in distinction from [Arabs], [Walers] (q.v.), English horses, and even from 'stud-breds,' which are horses reared in India, but from foreign sires; 'country ships' are those which are owned in Indian ports, though often officered by Europeans; country bottled beer is beer imported from England in cask and bottled in India; ['country-wound' silk is that reeled in the crude native fashion]. The term, as well as the H. desī, of which country is a translation, is also especially used for things grown or made in India as substitutes for certain foreign articles. Thus the Cicca disticha in Bombay gardens is called 'Country gooseberry'; Convolvulus batatas, or sweet potato, is sometimes called the 'country potato.' It was, equally with our quotidian root which has stolen its name, a foreigner in India, but was introduced and familiarised at a much earlier date. Thus again desī bādām, or 'country almond,' is applied in Bengal to the nut of the Terminalia Catappa. On desī, which is applied, among other things, to silk, the great Ritter (dormitans Homerus) makes the odd remark that desī is just Seide reversed! But it would be equally apposite to remark that Trigon-ometry is just Country-ometry reversed!
Possibly the idiom may have been taken up from the Portuguese, who also use it, e.g. 'açafrao da terra,' 'country saffron,' i.e. [safflower], otherwise called bastard saffron, the term being sometimes applied to turmeric. But the source of the idiom is general, as the use of desī shows. Moreover the Arabic baladī, having the same literal meaning, is applied in a manner strictly analogous, including the note of disparagement, insomuch that it has been naturalised in Spanish as indicating 'of little or no value.' Illustrations of the mercantile use of beledi (i.e. baladī) will be found in a note to Marco Polo, 2nd ed. ii. 370. For the Spanish use we may quote the Dict. of Cobarruvias (1611): "Baladi, the thing which is produced at less cost, and is of small duration and profit." (See also Dozy and Engelmann, 232 seq.)
1516.—"Beledyn ginger grows at a distance of two or three leagues all round the city of Calicut.... In Bengal there is also much ginger of the country (Gengivre Beledi)."—Barbosa, 221 seq.
[1530.—"I at once sent some of these country men (homeens valadis) to the Thanas."—Alboquerque, Cartas, p. 148.]
1582.—"The Nayres maye not take anye Countrie women, and they also doe not marrie."—Castañeda, (by N. L.), f. 36.
[1608.—"The Country here are at dissension among themselves."—Danvers, Letters, i. 20.]
1619.—"The twelfth in the morning Master Methwold came from Messalipatam in one of the Countrey Boats."—Pring, in Purchas, i. 638.
1685.—"The inhabitants of the Gentoo Town, all in arms, bringing with them also elephants, kettle-drums, and all the Country music."—Wheeler, i. 140.
1747.—"It is resolved and ordered that a Serjeant with two Troopers and a Party of Country Horse, to be sent to Markisnah Puram to patroll...."—Ft. St. David Council of War, Dec. 25. MS. Records in India Office.
1752.—"Captain Clive did not despair ... and at ten at night sent one Shawlum, a serjeant who spoke the country languages, with a few sepoys to reconnoitre."—Orme, i. 211 (ed. 1803).