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    The Story of Tea
    The Story of Tea
    The Story of Tea
    Ebook127 pages2 hours

    The Story of Tea

    By E. Jaiwant Paul

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    The Story of Tea traces the history, myths and rituals of growing and drinking tea from the tea gardens of China to the roadside dhabas of India. Thomas Garraway's first public sale of tea in England in 1657 was of historic importance. For this he published and distributed a poster... "The leaf of such known virtues ... that it is sold for twice its weight in silver. It maketh the body active and lusty. It helpth the headache, giddiness and heaviness and thereof. It is very good against stone and gravel, cleaning the kidneys and ureter. It is good against crudities, strengthening the weakness of the Ventricle or Stomack, causing good appetite and Deigestion and particularly for men of a corpulent body and such as are great eaters of flesh... It prevents and cures ague, surefeits...and fevers, by infusing a fit quantity of the leaf, thereby provoking a most gentle vomit...It drives away all pains in the Collick proceeding from wind and purgeth safety the Gall..." So said Thomas Garraway and indeed, many belived him!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRoli Books
    Release dateApr 1, 2005
    ISBN9789351940388
    The Story of Tea

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      The Story of Tea - E. Jaiwant Paul

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      The Origin of Tea

      Legend has it that tea originated in China in the dim reaches of history almost 5,000 years ago. This goes back to the time when the Pharaoh ruled in Egypt and the great settlements of Mohenjodaro and Harappa were established in north India, there were stirrings of civilization in Babylon and Assyria and in Europe people lived in caves.

      Emperor Shen Nung, who ruled China in the twenty-eighth century BC, was a legendary figure. He was the Divine Husbander and the credit for the plough, the hoe and the care of farm animals goes to him. He was not only a philosopher, but also interested in herbal medicine.

      In an enchanting legend, once Shen Nung was sitting contemplatively in his garden. He was sipping a bowl of hot water when a gust of breeze blew a few leaves from a nearby tea plant, which grew wild in China, into the imperial bowl. The Emperor sniffed the fragrant brew, nodded his royal head with pleasure at this new aroma and drank it. As a beneficent ruler, he decided that such a wondrous brew should be shared with his subjects and thus tea was born. The date of this discovery is believed to be 2737 BC.

      There is another story associated with the origin of tea, but set several centuries later and tied to the spread of Buddhism. It is believed that tea was introduced into China by Dharma, a grey-eyed monk from India who went to China in about AD 526 to spread the message of Buddhism. For many years the saint prayed and meditated without sleep. It so happened that during his sojourns, he was meditating in a temple at Honan province. But unfortunately, he grew drowsy and inadvertently fell asleep. He was so disgusted with this that he punished himself by cutting off his eyelids. He also discovered, by accident, that if he chewed the leaves of a particular shrub, he could remain alert. And this turned out to be the tea shrub. This enabled him to continue his meditations for several years more without sleep. Another improbable version of this story is that having cut off his eyelids, Dharma threw them and on the place where they fell sprang a tea shrub!

      Moving on from legend to fact, it can be stated that the earliest mention of tea which modern scholars give credence to is found in the Erh Ya – an ancient Chinese dictionary published around 350 BC.

      Tea was at first considered a medicinal herb and was infused from green untreated leaves. This must have tasted foul enough for most people to believe that it was doing them a great deal of good. Later, the Chinese found that a far better drink was possible if the leaves were allowed to wither and then dried by exposure to controlled heat before being infused. Once this was done tea was set on the path to popularity.

      Beginning from the eighth century, tea became integral to the lives of the privileged classes in both China and Japan. It had become so popular that as is the way with governments, they thought it fit to levy a tax on tea.

      The renowned author, Lu Yu, wrote his scholarly Ch’a Ching, a remarkable paean to tea, at the time of the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) when China had become the greatest empire in the world. By then tea had become more than just a drink, it was a symbol of hospitality and ceremony. Lu Yu discoursed on the planting and manufacture of tea, the type of water to be used, the 24 different items of equipment and the method of preparing a cup of tea.

      Lu Yu whimsically wrote, ‘There are a thousand different appearances of tea leaves. Some leaves look like the Tartar’s boots (wrinkled), some like the buffalo’s breast (regular shaped), some look like the floating clouds arising from the mountains (curled), some like the ripples on the water caused by a breeze, some leaves look dull brown and some like a piece of newly cultivated land covered with puddles after a violent rain (uneven). These are good teas.’ Yu Lu’s poetic similes above suggest that tea leaves can be wrinkled or regular shaped, curled or uneven; descriptions which are not very different from those that the modern tea taster employs. Lu Yu became a sort of a patron saint for tea lovers. He summed up his philosophy in the now famous line of poetry, ‘I am in no way interested in immortality, but only in the taste of tea.’

      It is interesting to note that much of the advice contained in Ch’a Ching and the etiquette suggested are still followed to this day. Lu Yu further wrote, ‘For exquisite freshness and vibrant fragrance, limit the number of cups to three. If one can be satisfied with less than perfection, five are permissible.’

      Another Chinese poet was, however, more liberal about the quantity of tea to be drunk. He wrote, ‘The first bowl soothes the throat, while the second banishes loneliness. At the third bowl, I search my soul and find 5,000 volumes of ancient poems. With the fourth bowl, a slight perspiration washes away all unhappy things. At the fifth bowl, my bones and muscles are cleansed. With the sixth bowl, I am in communication with the immortal spirit. The seventh bowl? It is forbidden: already a cool ethereal breeze begins to soothe my whole body.’ It seems as if the second author was addicted to a beverage more potent than tea!

      Lu Yu was also one of the earliest and most discerning tea tasters. ‘Those who attribute smoothness, darkness and flatness to good tea are connoisseurs of an inferior order; those who attribute wrinkles, yellowness and uneven surface to good tea’ (presumably tea leaves) ‘are the ordinary connoisseurs; those who hold the opinion that these qualities may or may not belong to good tea are the superior connoisseurs because whether tea is good or otherwise depends upon its flavour.’

      The renowned author goes on to say, ‘Sometimes onion, ginger, jujube, orange peel and peppermint are boiled along with the tea. Alas! this is the slop water of a ditch.’ He also had views on the beneficial aspects of tea. Boiled water is to quench first, wine to drown sorrow and tea to avoid sleepiness… when feeling hot and thirsty, suffering from headache, fatigue or pain in the joints one should drink tea.’

      Tea the ‘wondrous bud’ was originally called te, but somehow down the ages the Chinese character for te was changed to cha, which is now the current term for tea. However, in certain Chinese dialects the word te was retained. Thus in Europe and America this is how the drink was popularly known. In India it is cha or chai and in Russia and Portugal it is a derivative of cha, while in Arabic it became shai.

      By the sixth or seventh century although tea was available in the powdered form, the more popular form was brick tea. The leaves were harvested and powdered to enhance the aroma and flavour, and then they were, finally, pressed into moulds, which were heated over charcoal. These processes resulted in the production of brick tea. These bricks could be easily transported to all parts of the country. The processing of tea was, gradually, improved to produce more subtle and finer teas. However, brick tea remained popular till the nineteenth century and found a ready market not only in China, but also in Russia mainly because it was easier to transport.

      Tea in China, gradually, became a mark of friendship and hospitality. It established a warm camaraderie and was served on all social occasions. The art of tea making reached its height from the tenth century onward under the Sung Dynasty, also famous for its pottery. Emperor Hui Tsun (1100-1126) was a connoisseur and wrote a treatise on tea. The emperor’s own serenity required a particularly pure form of tea. The imperial plucking method was used only for his tea. The leaves were plucked by young virgins wearing gloves. With the help of gold scissors they chopped only the bud and the youngest leaf. The leaves were then left on a golden platter to dry before being poured directly into the emperor’s bowl. Not everyone could aspire to such a degree of purity, and people generally gathered in tea houses known for their warmth, their floral decorations and calligraphed scrolls. There were also working-class tea houses that the famous traveller, Marco Polo felt ‘were of dubious propriety, since somewhat bawdy ladies enlivened the atmosphere with songs’.

      Tea crossed the seas and was introduced by the Chinese to their cousins in Japan as early as the eighth century. In AD 729, the Japanese emperor presented China tea to one hundred priests, who attended a course on Zen Buddhism at the royal palace. Zen Buddhism developed as a reaction against the elaborate ritual and ceremony of organized Buddhism. When these priests returned, many of them planted the shrub in their own parishes. With this beginning it is understandable that tea became involved with religion. Zen monks, who drank tea to keep awake during long sessions of meditation, practised ritual tea drinking. It later became an actual part of Zen ritual, honouring the first patriarch from India, Dharma. However, tea gradually became a widely popular drink not just in temples, but in social gatherings throughout Japan. The tea house became an important institution and a special architecture called chaseki was developed for such a house. The concept was one of extreme simplicity of construction enhanced by a single decoration, which could be some calligraphy, painting or a flower arrangement. The tea house became the place for friends to gather, drink tea, and discuss the merits of different forms of art.

      In the ninth century the

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