EARLY HISTORY. 13 



of tea, that there is still standing at Uji, not far from 

 Osaka, a temple erected on what is said to have been the 

 first tea plantation established in Japan, sacred to the 

 traditions of the Japanese and in honor of the Chinese 

 who first introduced the tea plant into the Island empire. 

 Another more authentic account states that the Tea- 

 seed was brought to Japan from China by the Buddhist 

 priest Mi-yoye, about the beginning of the thirteenth 

 century, and first planted in the southern island of Kiu- 

 siu, from whence its cultivation soon spread throughout 

 that country. 



Some English writers go so far as to claim that As- 

 sam, in India, is the original country of tea, from the 

 fact that a species has been discovered there in a wild 

 state as well as in the slopes of the Himalaya moun- 

 tains. But though found in both a wild and cultivated 

 state in many countries of the East at the present time, 

 all its Western traditions point to China, and to China 

 only, as the original country of Tea, and that the plant 

 is native and indigenous to that country is indisputably 

 beyond question. 



It was not known to the Greeks or Romans in any 

 form ; and that it could not have been known in India in 

 very early times is inferred from the fact that no refer- 

 ence to the plant or its product is to be found in the 

 Sanscrit. But that the plant and its use, not only as an 

 agreeable and exhilarating beverage, but as an article of 

 traffic worthy of other nations, must have been known to 

 the Chinese as early as the first century of the Christian 

 era, the following extract from an ancient work entitled 

 the " Periplous of the Erythraen Sea," may serve to prove. 

 The author, usually supposed to be Arryan, after describ- 

 ing " a city called Thinae," proceeds to narrate a yearly 

 mercantile journey to the vicinity of "a certain people 



