I'lcKI.KD TEA LKA 



CAMELLIA 



THEA 



History 



hill* 



OUMM 



i: >r i-. 



Vegetable Tea. 



nipiir. and again, m iv.il, wa specially investigated m th- 

 imei-tinii \\ii l . to ascertain to what extent tin- pent* and 



i.f the cultivated I.-. i pl.int existed <>n the wild or acclimatised stocks. There 

 \\inild -.-m little dni,i that it ha* been cult r .veral centuries at least, 



m I'ppi-r Hiirm.i anil the Shan States, and doubtless may ! wild in 

 nes also, though according to most observers it occurs in isolated ] 

 similar to tho,e m th-- greater part of the Assam area; hence it could of course 



imder these < litions he upheld as a survival of former cultivation rather 



niic a truly indigenous hahitat. [Cf. Agri. Ledg., 189i. No. 27. | 

 History. Mret schneider (Bot. Sin., IH'.rj. ii.. _'), 130-1) states that the tea 

 plant is mentioned in the ancient Chinese Dictionary, the Rh-ya. It is 

 called kin and k'n-tn (k'u meaning bitter). He further explains that 

 t he ( 'hineso character 1"u, which has so many other meanings in the early Chinese 

 -. may. however, have specially meant tea. He then adds that the 

 nnparatively modern Chinese character cA'a arose through a confusion with 

 f t'ti, somewhere between 202 B.C. and 25 A.D., but that it did not come 

 eneral use much before the 7th or 8th centuries. So in the same way the 

 >r ming, which would appear to denote the tea plant, occurs as ming 

 fai (= tea vegetable) in works written some centuries B.C. The Shans and 

 is to this day use pickled tea-leaves (see Letpet below) more as a vegetable 

 relish than as a beverage, and it seems possible that this may have been the 

 condition of use during the earliest classic times of China. We read that Wang use as a 

 lens.', father-in-law of the Emperor, in the middle of the 4th century, was fond Beverage. 

 drinking tea, and set it before his friends, but they found it too bitter and 

 lerally declined, feigning indisposition. So again Bretschneider tells us 

 it according to the Ch'a-pu a special treatise on tea, published between the 

 th and 13th centuries the Emperor Wen-ti (589-605 A.D.) was recommended 

 a Buddhist priest to drink boiled ming leaves as a medicine for headache, 

 is somewhat curious that Ksempfer relates a similar Japanese tradition that 

 would seem to attribute the introduction of the plant to that country by Darma, 

 the third son of an Indian king. But if the Cu of ancient Chinese classics be 

 epted as denoting tea, it may have originally been viewed as a medicine 

 led from the plant known as ming, ch'uan and kutu. The habit of drinking 

 decoction of the specially prepared leaves, there would seem no doubt, is of 

 comparatively modern origin. In the 8th century A.D. we have the first un- 

 i ilited evidence of tea having become a regular industry, for in the annals of 



Tang Dynasty we learn of its being subjected to an imperial duty. It was Imperial Duty. 

 >t regularly cultivated in Japan until the \ 3th century. That tea drinking in 

 rest of the world is quite a modern habit may be inferred from there being 

 classic names either for the plant, the prepared leaves or the beverage, in 

 Japanese, Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Greek or Latin. 



Marco Polo, who travelled in China (in the tea districts of Fuh-kien) in the Silence of 

 Jth century, makes no mention of tea, neither the plant, the vegetable nor the Marco Poio. 

 yerage, and yet it is well established that the plant and its properties were 

 fully known then as to-day. [Cf. ed. Yule, ii., 37-8, n.] But in passing 

 may be added that he similarly does not record having found the 

 aple in any part of his long travels drinking coffee. His omission to record 

 is the more curious, however, since four centuries previously (9th century) 

 Muhammadan merchant Solaiman (according to Reinaud, Relat. des Voy. 

 par lee Arabes et les Persians dans I'lnde et a la Chine, 1845, i., 40) wrote, 

 ie people of China are accustomed to use as a beverage an infusion of the 

 it, which they call sakh." " It is considered very wholesome. This plant 

 ie leaves) is sold in all cities of the Empire." [Cf. Macpherson, Hist. Europ, 

 im. Ind., 1812, n. 130]. Ramusio (in the introduction to his edition of 

 co Polo published in 1545) mentions having learned of the tea beverage 

 jm a Persian merchant, Hajji Muhammed. It was used all over the country of 

 it hay. where it was called chiai. In 1560, Gaspar da Cruz (in Purchas' Pilgrimea, 

 180) refers to the porcelain used by the Chinese in presenting to their friends 

 beverage cha. Maffeius (Hist. Indicarum (Select. Epist. ex Ind.) 99), in a 

 tter from Ludovic Almeida dated Nov. 1565, similarly says that it was 

 custom with the Japanese to show their friends with pleasure the pots, 

 cups, etc., employed by them in drinking of a certain herb, reduced to powder, 

 which was called i-hi-n. Maffeius (in the text of his work which was originally 

 published in 1588) attributes the freedom of the Chinese from certain diseases 

 (tone, etc.) to their habit of tea-drinking, and the Chinese (like the Japanese), japan. 



211 



Tea-drinking 



in i 'li:u i :i:.<i 



