— 229 — 



the inmost provinces of China, which siirround the Ante-Tibetan mountains, 

 towards the coast-lands. It is possible that the latter région was already 

 inhabited by a wild, small-leaved tea plant, in several distinct forms; 

 perhaps this has (partly) corne from the West; perhaps hybridization between 

 indigenous Camellia's with their imported allies has contributed towards 

 the évolution of polymorphic groups in Chinese tea. Again and again, we 

 hâve to confess our profound ignorance. 



As regards Yun-nan, an ancient centre of tea culture (Henry ') thinks 

 it is «perhaps the site of the earliest cultivation of the tea plant"), we 

 might assume that hère it was the plant and not the beverage that had 

 entered Further-lndia and Burma; but hère again we meet with objections. 

 It seems strange that both manufacturing and consuming methods should 

 hâve been so completely altered, throughout the Shan countries in question, 

 and, stranger still, that every trace of manufacturing and consuming habits 

 should hâve been absolutely blotted out from the memory of the Tonkinese ; 

 and secondly we are aware of the fact that leppett and mieng tea are not 

 simply large-leaved China tea, but are clearly related to the Indian variety. 

 How far we may suppose hère once more, that a distinct type had a 

 distribution centre of its own in this territory, or, conversely, that the 

 Shan type as we know it, is the resuit of hybridization between indigenous 

 and imported tea varieties, — there is nobody who can tell. Neither morpho- 

 logical comparison, nor breeding experiments are capable of deciding 

 thèse historical questions. 



There is, however, a remarkable fact that must hâve some bearing 

 on our problem, viz., that tea plants hâve been foiind near the important 

 caravan roads between China and India. As to Tong-king and the I-bang 

 tea district, we know thit they communicate with Sze-chuen by an im- 

 portant road via Sze-mao and Yun-nan-fu -). Formerly, the route to Upper- 

 Burma passed equally through thèse places, but has gradually shifted 

 (I do not know at what time, but I only want to point out poss/Y^/e routes), 

 and now still mainly leads from Yun-nan-fu via Ta-li-fu and Teng-yueh 

 (= Momein) along the Taiping-river to Bhamo on the Irawaddy^). Now, 

 . Bhamo is the place where Griffith and others found tea in a „wild" 

 condition. K'ung-Ming, who is said to hâve introduced tea cultivation 

 into Yun-nan, penetrated as far as Teng-yueh (see chapter 11), and 

 POTTINGER found the plant near the Taiping! Besides, there exists a road 

 via Nam-khan and Yung-chang, and this route too skiits weil-known 

 leppett districts. And another weighty fact that points to introduction of 

 tea culture and perhaps to an exogenous origin of the tea plant, is, the 

 existence in Further-lndia of several records to that effect. We learnt in 

 the preceding chapter, that, in Yun-nan^ K'ung-Ming was said to hâve 

 imported tea cultivation from the North (Bourne); that the seeds from 



') A. Henry 1898, p. 292. 



2) H. B. Morse 1913, p. 310. 



') H. B. Morse 1913, p. 275. -J. Nisbet 1901, p. 448. 



