Chinese whisper that world's hot drink is their cup of tea

Indians need four things to survive - food, clothing, shelter and tea. We are not allowed to include tea in food. It probably is not possible for an average Indian to see a day through without a cup of tea. For the overworked people today, tea and coffee are more important than food. So since when has tea been a favorite of people? When was it first discovered?

According to Chinese mythology, in 2737 BC Chinese Emperor Shen Nung was sitting under a tree while his servant boiled drinking water. A leaf from a wild tea tree dropped into the water and Shen Nung decided to try the brew. Finding the drink a pleasant and relaxing flavour, he ordered extensive planting of the crop.

Indian and Japanese legends both attribute tea's discovery to Bodhidharma, the devout Buddhist priest who founded Zen Buddhism. The Indian legend tells how in the fifth year of a seven-year sleepless contemplation of Buddha he began to feel drowsy. He immediately plucked a few leaves from a nearby bush and chewed them which dismissed his fatigue. The bush was a wild tea tree.

Tea was introduced to Japan in 805 AD as a medicine by Zen Buddhist missionaries because of its meditation enhancing properties. Even now, tea is used widely all over the world for its curative prop erties. Medicinally, tea has been most used as a stimulant or as an astringent lotion. An infusion of tea leaves was once to heal insect bites, for some digestive problems and to reduce sweating in fevers. In Tamil Nadu, tea leaves have been used homoeopathically for mania, paralysis, nervousness, neuralgia and sleeplessness In the 1500s, tea arrived in Portugal, as the Portuguese were the first to establish trade relations with China and from there, it spread to the rest of Europe. The British are known to savour tea and varieties of it.

India saw the popularity of tea a little late. In 1823 wild tea was discovered in Assam.

It was cultivated and with such good effect that in 1839 the first shipment of Indian tea was brought to London.

In the meantime, Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, which was dependent almost entirely upon its flourishing coffee trade, fell a victim to the dreaded coffee blight and in 10 years the coffee industry was entirely wiped out. The planters then turned to tea and in a few years their tea production was rivaling that of India. By the end of the century the export of tea from these two new sources was far greater than that of China. Today India and Sri Lanka exports millions of pounds of tea annually.

Assam tea (grown at sea level is known for its body, briskness, malty flavour, and strong, bright colour), Darjeeling tea (grown in the foothills of the Himalayas) and Nilgiri tea (intensely aromatic, fragrant and flavourful tea grown in the southern portion of the Western Ghats) are the most popular kinds of tea consumed worldwide.

The nature of the beverage and style of tea preparation were quite different from the way we experience tea today. Tea leaves were processed into compressed cakes form. The dried teacake, generally called brick tea, was ground in a stone mortar. Hot water was added to the powdered teacake and then consumed as a hot beverage From the earliest times tea was renowned for its properties as a healthy, refreshing drink.

It was only during the Chinese Tang Dynasty (618 AD to 906 AD) that tea became China's national drink and the word cha was used to describe tea. The modern term "tea" is derived from early Chinese dialect words such as Tchai, Cha and Tay used both to describe the beverage and the leaf.