Tea, Its History and Mystery

CHAPTER I.. Early History.

EARLY HISTORY.

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The history of Tea is intimately bound up with that of China, that is, so far as the Western world is concerned, its production and consumption being for centuries confined to that country. But, having within the past two centuries become known and almost indispensable as an article of diet in every civilized country of the globe, it cannot but prove interesting to inquire into the progress, properties and effects of a commodity which could have induced so large a portion of mankind to abandon so many other articles of diet in its favor, as well as the results of its present enormous consumption.

Although now to be found in a wild state in the mountain-ranges of Assam, and in a state of cultivation through a wide range from India to Japan, the original country of Tea is not definitely known, but from the fact of its being in use in China from the earliest times it is commonly attributed to that country. Yet though claimed to have been known in China long anterior to the Christian era, and even said to have been mentioned in the Sao-Pao, published 2700 B. C., and also in the Rye, 600 B. C., the exact date or manner of its first discovery and use in that country is still in doubt. One writer claims that the famous herb was cultivated and classified in China 2000 B. C., almost as completely as it is to-day, and that it was used as a means of promoting amity between Eastern monarchs and potentates at this early period. Chin-Nung, a celebrated scholar and philosopher, who existed long before Confucius, is claimed to have said of it: “Tea is better than wine, for it leadeth not to intoxication, neither does it cause a man to say foolish things and repent thereof in his sober moments. It is better than water, for it doth not carry disease; neither doth it act as a poison, as doth water when the wells contain foul and rotten matter,” and Confucius admonishes his followers to: “Be good and courteous to all, even to the stranger from other lands. If he say unto thee that he thirsteth give unto him a cup of warm Tea without money and without price.”

A Chinese legend ascribes its first discovery to one Darma, a missionary, famed throughout the East for his religious zeal, who, in order to set an example of piety to his followers, imposed on himself various privations, among which was that of forswearing sleep. After some days and nights passed in this austere manner, he was overcome and involuntarily fell into a deep slumber, on awakening from which he was so distressed at having violated his vow, and in order to prevent a repetition of allowing “tired eyelids to rest on tired eyes,” he cut off the offending portions and flung them to the ground. On returning the next day, he discovered that they had undergone a strange metamorphosis, becoming changed into a shrub, the like of which had never been seen before. Plucking some of the leaves and chewing them he found his spirits singularly exhilarated, and his former vigor so much restored that he immediately recommended the newly discovered boon to his disciples.

Tradition, on the other hand, never at a loss for some marvelous story, but with more plausibility, claims that the use of Tea was first discovered accidentally in China by some Buddhist priests, who, unable to use the brackish water near their temple, steeped in it the leaves of a shrub, growing in the vicinity, with the intention of correcting its unpleasant properties. The experiment was so successful that they informed the inhabitants of their discovery, subsequently cultivating the plant extensively for that express purpose. While another record attributes its first discovery about 2737 B. C. to the aforementioned Chin-Nung, to whom all agricultural and medicinal knowledge is traced in China. In replenishing a fire made of the branches of the Tea plant, some of the leaves fell into the vessel in which he was boiling water for his evening meal. Upon using it he found it to be so exciting and exhilarating in its effects that he continued to use it; imparting the knowledge thus gained to others, its use soon spread throughout the country.

These accounts connected with the first discovery of the Tea plant in China are purely fabulous, and it is not until we come down to the fourth century of the Christian era that we can trace any positive allusion to it by a Chinese writer. But, as the early history of nearly every other ancient discovery is more or less vitiated by fable, we ought not to be any more fastidious or less indulgent towards the marvelous in the discovery of Tea than we are towards that of fire, iron, glass or coffee. The main facts may be true, though the details be incorrect; and, though the accidental discovery of fire may not have been made by Suy-Jin in the manner claimed, yet it probably was communicated originally by the friction of two sticks. Nor may it be strictly correct to state that Fuh-he made the accidental discovery of iron by the burning of wood on brown earth any more than the Phœnicians discovered the making of glass by burning green wood on sand, yet it is not improbable that some such accidental processes first led to these discoveries. Thus, also, considerable allowances are to be deducted from the scientific discoveries of Chin-Nung in botany, when we read of his having, in one day, discovered no less than seventy different species of plants that were poisonous and seventy others that were antidotes against their baneful effects.

According to some Chinese authorities, the Tea plant was first introduced into their country from Corea as late as the fourth century of the present era, from whence it is said to have been carried to Japan in the ninth. Others again maintaining that it is undoubtedly indigenous to China, being originally discovered on the hills of those provinces, where it now grows so abundantly, no date, however, being named. While the Japanese, to whom the plant is as valuable as it is to the Chinese, state that both countries obtained it simultaneously from Corea, about A. D. 828. This latter claim not being sustained by any proof whatever—Von Siebold, to the contrary—who, relying on the statements of certain Japanese writers to this effect, argues in support of their assertions, the improbability of which is unconsciously admitted by Von Siebold himself when he observes “that in the southern provinces of Japan the tea plant is abundant on the plains, but as the traveler advances towards the mountains it disappears,” hence inferring that it is an exotic. The converse of this theory holding good of China, a like inference tends to but confirm their claim that with them the plant is indigenous. That the Japanese did not originally obtain the plant from Corea but from China is abundantly proven by the Japanese themselves, many of whom admit that it was first introduced to their country from China about the middle of the ninth century. In support of this acknowledgment it is interesting to note, as confirming the Chinese origin 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 Kiusiu, from whence its cultivation soon spread throughout that country.

Some English writers go so far as to claim that Assam, 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 mountains. 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 reference 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 Erythræan Sea,” may serve to prove. The author, usually supposed to be Arryan, after describing “a city called Thinæ,” proceeds to narrate a yearly mercantile journey to the vicinity of “a certain people called Sesatæi, of short stature, broad faces, and flat noses”—evidently natives of China—adds “that the articles they bring for traffic outwardly resemble vine leaves, being wrapped in mats, which they leave behind them on their departure to their own country in the interior. From these mats the Thinæ pick out a haulm, called petros, from which they draw the fibre and stalks; spreading out the leaves, they double and make them up into balls, passing the fibre through them, in which form they take the name of Malabathrum, and under this name they are brought into India by those who so prepare them.” Under any interpretation this account sounds like a remote, obscure and confused story. Still one of the authors of the able “Historical Account of China,” published in 1836, has ventured to identify this Malabathrum of the Thinæ with the Tea of the Chinese. Vossius Vincent and other authors, while admitting the difficulty of understanding why it should be carried from Arracan to China, and from China back to India, unhesitatingly assert that Malabathrum was nothing more than the Betel-leaf, so widely used in the East at the time as a masticatory. Horace mentions Malabathrum, but only as an ointment. Pliny refers to it both in that sense and as a medicine. Dioscorides describing it as a masticatory only. While the author of the “Historical Account” prefers to consider the passage in the Periplous as a very clumsy description of a process not intelligently understood by the describer, but as agreeing far better with the manipulation of Tea than with that of the Betel-leaf, and his conjecture, unsupported as it is, merits citation if only for its originality.

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