Tea, Its Mystery and History

LEGENDARY ORIGIN OF THE PLANT.

According to the most authentic Chinese historians, the Tea plant was introduced from the Corea in the eighth century, during the dynasty of Lyang. Being both approved of and much relished by the Emperor it was extensively cultivated, so that it rapidly became popular with all sections of the community. As this story was too prosaic for general acceptation, the masses, and even certain sceptical literati, readily received a more poetical account, which, like many of our own nursery tales, veils some political allegory.

The story runs, that in the year 510, an Indian prince--one Darma, third son of King Kosjusva--famed throughout the East for his religious zeal, landed in China on a Missionary enterprise. He devoted all his time and thought to the diffusion of a knowledge of God. In order to set an example of piety to others, he imposed on himself various privations and mortifications, forswore sleep, and, living mostly in the open air, devoted himself to prayer, preaching, and contemplation. However, after several years passed in this excessively austere manner, he involuntarily fell asleep. Upon awaking, so distressed was he at having violated his oath that, to prevent a repetition of such backsliding and never again permit “tired eyelids” to “rest on tired eyes,” he cut off those offending portions of his body, and flung them on the ground. Returning next day to the same spot, he discovered that his eyelids had undergone a strange metamorphosis, having been changed into a shrub the like of which had never before been seen upon the earth. Having eaten some of the leaves, he found his spirits singularly exhilarated thereby; while his former vigour was restored. Hence he recommended the newly-discovered boon to his disciples and followers, so that after a time the use of Tea rapidly spread. A portrait of Darma is given by Kæmpfu, the first authoritative writer on China. At the foot of the portrait is the representation of a reed, supposed to be indicative of the religious enthusiast having crossed rivers and seas in the pursuit of his mission. It is by no means difficult, out of this wonderful legend, to extract a moral, namely, that an earnest individual, who had acquired the useful habit of keeping his eyes open, discovered one of Nature’s secrets, which had entirely escaped the observation of all others.

Towards the close of the sixteenth century, a learned physician of Padua--one Giovanni Bolero--published a work “On the Causes of the Magnificence and Greatness of Cities.” Therein, while treating of the Orient, he observes: “The Chinese have an herb out of which they press a delicate juice that serves them for drink instead of wine; it also preserves their health and frees them from all those evils which the use of wine produces among ourselves.” Albeit the allusion is somewhat cloudy, still no doubt exists but that the celebrated Paduan refers to Tea. This is supposed to be the earliest mention of the plant by any European writer.

It is curious that among the many wonderful things which Marco Polo--the great traveller of his day--saw in China, he omits to mention the Tea plant either as shrub or beverage. This omission is the more unaccountable inasmuch as both himself and his father (whose voyages he records) must have visited districts wherein Tea was in common use. The early Portuguese navigators are equally silent on this matter, nor is mention made thereof in the logs of our own freebooting Sea Kings. These, however, troubled themselves less about botany than the broad pieces to be found in the holds of the Spanish King’s galleons. Had Sir Walter Raleigh, who travelled West instead of East, accompanied his friend Drake on his famous voyage round the world, he might have added to his discoveries of the potato and tobacco plants of America, that of Tea in China. The honour of introducing the refreshing and invigorating leaf to Europe was, clearly, not reserved for English travellers. This honour is properly claimed by the Portuguese, although they had been trading for many years with the Chinese before they made the discovery, just about the close of the sixteenth century.

Shortly after Tea had become a popular beverage in China, it was exported to Japan, the only nation with which the Chinese were suffered to hold intercourse. In those islands it assumed even a more important position than it held in the “Flowery Land,” so that to be able to make and serve the beverage with a polished grace was recognised as an indubitable sign of a polite and aristocratic education. The Japanese devoted their artistic and mechanical skill to the production of tea-caddies, tea-trays, tea-pots, and tea-cups and saucers, remarkable for exquisiteness of design no less than peculiarity of fabric. Tea-houses were opened in the leading cities of Japan. These were frequented by the Daimios, or lesser nobles, and the lower classes alike, who took their chief pleasure in such popular resorts.

Eminent writers, also, considered it no indignity to extol the precious beverage. What Bacchanalian and hunting songs, cavalier and sea songs, rhapsodical treatises in laudation of hunting, coaching, and so forth, are to the literature of England, such was Tea to the writers, artists, and musicians of China and Japan. In other words their Dickenses, their Goldsmiths, their Nimrods, their Dibdins, their Tom Moores, and their Leeches, instead of having a wide variety of topics to treat of, as was the case with their English compeers, were confined to one subject--Tea. Indeed, each plantation was supposed to possess its peculiar virtues and excellences, like to the slightly varying vineyards of the Rhine, the Rhone, the Garonne, or the Moselle. Each had its poet to sing its praises in running rhymes. In illustration, one Chinese bard, who seemingly was an Anacreon in his way, magnifies the shrub that grows on the Mong-shan mountains, in the territory of Ya-chew, in words which, literally translated, mean:--

“One ounce doth all disorders cure, With two your troubles will be few’r; Three to the bones more vigour give; With four for ever you will live, As young as on your day of birth, A true Isyen[A] upon the earth.”

[A] An immortal.

However hyperbolical this testimony may be considered, it at least serves to show the high estimation in which Tea was held. This fact furnishes the best possible answer to the silly objections of certain modern writers who would fain have us believe that the Chinese cultivate Tea, not for their own consumption, but to sell to foreigners. The only gleam of truth latent in so manifestly absurd an assertion being that the Celestials invariably drink the pure Tea, not that which has undergone artificial preparation for those outer barbarians, the English consumers, it being an admitted fact that they prepare Tea “to order,” and can by the aid of mineral facing-powder transform black Tea into green, or green Tea into black at pleasure. Such transformation, however, only alters the appearance to the eye; the quality, inferior or otherwise, remains concealed.

In due time Tea became, not simply in China and Japan, but also in India and Persia, the drink of ceremony, just as is coffee with the Turks and Arabs, and wine with ourselves. A little over two centuries since, a French traveller in Persia gravely imagined that what constituted a hospitable custom, was a universal desire to administer medicine. He avers that people “assigned to Tea such extravagant qualities that, imagining it alone able to keep a man in constant health, they treated those who came to visit them with this drink at all hours.” This statement might be paralleled by an Eastern writer who, treating of England, should use the same sentence, merely substituting the word “wine” for “Tea,” and he may add, “to increase the beneficial influence of the beverage, in many instances they make cabalistic movements with the glasses, sometimes clinking the edges together, meanwhile uttering the talismanic words, ‘Your health!’ which are supposed to possess some potent charm.”