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The Origins of Tea
For nearly 5,000 years people have been drinking
and enjoying tea. But who discovered this delicious, health-promoting
beverage? Credit typically goes to the Chinese Emperor
Shen-Nung, also known as the “Divine
Healer.” According to legend, the Emperor was boiling a pot of water
when some tea leaves blew in through the window and settled into the
pot. Shen-Nung drank the resulting brew and the rest was history. The
first written record of tea is found in Shen-Nung’s medical book the
Pen Ts’ao, written in 2737 B.C., in which he noted that this
remarkable beverage “quenches thirst. It lessens the desire for sleep.
It gladdens and cheers the heart.”
According to a different legend, tea was discovered
by Dharma, the father of Zen
Buddhism. In 520 A.D., so the legend goes, Dharma made the trek from
India to China, where he demonstrated the Zen art of meditating by
sitting in front of a wall for nine straight years. Not surprisingly,
Dharma accidentally dozed off one day and when he woke up again he was
so furious with himself that he vowed never to sleep again. To make good
on this promise, he proceeded to cut off his eyelids! The bloody eyelids
fell to the earth where they became the seeds of a tea plant from which
a beverage could be made that lessened sleepiness.
Most likely, the true discovery of tea was made by
the aboriginal natives living in what we now call Southeast Asia, where
tea grows wild. The first historical record of tea was written in China
in 350 A.D. by Kuo P’o, who was
updating a Chinese dictionary. Kuo P’o added tea to the entries,
describing it as “a beverage…made from the leaves by boiling.” By this
time, tea was prized as a medicine that could cure digestive disorders
and nervous conditions. The tea leaves were also applied externally as a
paste to ease the pains of rheumatism. But tea was not yet used as an
everyday beverage.
As the desire for tea began to grow, a sufficient
supply could not be collected just plucking the leaves off of nearby
bushes. So tea plants began to be cultivated in the hills of Szechwan in
central China, with the practice spreading throughout China and Japan
courtesy of Buddhist priests. By the 5th century A.D.,
drinking tea for pleasure had become commonplace throughout China, and
farmers typically dedicated a portion of their land to tea cultivation,
while peasants often grew a few bushes in their gardens for private use.
Thus, tea drinking became a part of daily life, even for the common
people.
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Nadine Taylor, M.S., R.D. presents
GreenTeaLibrary.com,
the most comprehensive collection of scientific information
describing the health benefits of green tea.
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