Prince Siddhartha

We have mentioned before that nobody knows for sure when and where tea was first discovered. One of the most popular legends is of a Chinese King by the name of Shen Nong who is said to have discovered tea around 2737 B.C. More information about this legend can be found in the article titled Shen Nong - The Father of Tea. There is another legend that has spread throughout the Orient and traveling wherever tea and Buddhism went, gaining a large following in Japan. This legend is important to the Buddhist version of tea’s discovery because of its important to Zen Buddhist religious practice.

The legend says that a Prince with an Indian name called Siddhartha Gautama made a pilgrimage to China. To prove his faith he vowed never to sleep, not even in years, but one day when he felt really fatigued he fell into a deep sleep. When the Prince Siddhartha woke from his dream he was so ashamed at having broken his vow that he tore off his eyelids and threw them into the ground. His eyelids took root and from them a bush of green tea leaves sprouted. Prince Siddhartha started eating these leaves and it helped with his meditation and alleviated his weariness so he recommended it to his followers.

According to Indian tea origin theorists, tea was introduced to China by Prince Siddhartha in 519 B.C. However, tea had already been a part of China’s culture for at least one thousand years before Prince Siddhartha’s birth. It seems like the true origin of tea will remain unknown for the time being. Even though the legends of the origin of tea are wonderful in essence, they seem to hold some myth in them.

Join me in my next article as I explore the facts that allow us to determine the true origins of tea.

After the discovery of tea by emperor Shen Nung, as the story goes, it took a while for tea to become a popular drink in China. This was accomplished during the Tang dynasty (618-906 AD) when tea became the national drink of China.

Japan was the next country to fall in love with tea. With Budhist monks traveling to China to study, they would bring back to Japan the refreshing drink. Tea became part of Japanese culture as it is seen even today by rituals such as the Tea Ceremony.

Cup of tea in Holland

The history of tea in Europe began with the Portuguese, as they visited the East as traders and missionaries, they brought back with them new discoveries to the West, including tea. But it was the Dutch who truly introduced tea to Europe by establishing a trading post in the island of Java and commercially exporting the first batch of tea from China to Holland in 1606.

Tea soon became a popular drink in Holland and soon spread through continental western Europe, but because of its high price it remained a drink strictly for the wealthy.

Around 1675, as the amount of tea imported grew and prices dropped, tea became available to  common food shops and by that time, many well to do homes had exclusive tearooms.

Tea is said to have began as a medicine and grew into an everyday beverage. While tea entered the realm of poetry as one of the polite amusements in China, the fifteenth century saw Japan turn tea into a religion of aestheticism. This religion, known as Teaism, and introduced by Okakura Kakuzo, author of “The Book of Tea.”

Okakura

In Japanese culture, Teaism has been highly favored by the isolation of Japan from other cultures. Tea is a part of many Japanese habits, customs and cuisines. Anyone studying Japanese culture will notice the importance of tea as it is also in the literature and paintings.

Japanese Teahouse

Okakura describes Teaism as “a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.