TERNSTRG@MIACE 2. 497 
Hab.— Upper Assam, Cachar, China. Cultivated elsewhere. 
Vernacular.—Cha, Chai. (Ind.) ; . 
History, Uses, &c.—There is reason to believe that oe 
use of tea was unknown before the Christian era. This 
been accounted for by the fact that the districts where dhe 
plant grows wild were not till then annexed to the Chinese 
Empire. Its origin, like that of many other useful plants, 
has formed the subject of an interesting myth, which attributes 
_ its discovery to the Buddhists in the latter half of the fifth cen- 
_ tury. According to a Japanese legend related by Kaempfer, 
_ the patriarch Bodhidharma, who died in China in the year 495 
-D., -was so devoted an ascetic that he denied himself even 
natural rest. Being one day, however, overcome by sleep, he 
felt, on awaking, such keen remorse for yielding thus weakly 
to his lower nature, that he cut off both his eyelids and flang 
Pontiowed him with frosh vigour to renew his meditations. 
The next reference to it occurs in the account of the travels of 
two Mahomedans in the ninth century. Europeans, however, 
: Ramusio, Maffei, van Linschoten, and Botero. Later on, it 
_ wasagain described by the Jesuit Trigault and by Olearius. 
is generally supposed that it was first brought to Europe by 
Dutch East India Company during the first half of the 
venteenth century. The leaf reached Paris in 1635, and the 
b was planted there in the Royal Gardens in 1658. Russia - 
irst obtained tea in 1638, through Starkow, the envoy to “the 
Mongol Altyn Khan, who entrusted him with two hund 
ssaid to have considered it as worthless, and to 
