Tea as a Health Drink
The Chinese and the Japanese believe that tea is the ‘elixir of immortality’ and the ‘nectar fit for the Gods’. Literary giants like Lord Byron, Dr. Samuel Johnson, John Ruskin, Coleridge, Charles Lamb, Shelly, John Keats, W.M. Thackery, H.W. Long Fellow and others were all avowed tea drinkers.
So , whenever you sip a cup of hot steaming tea, remember that you are enjoying a health drink and not just a common man’s drink. The latest research has shown that drinking your cuppa can help you maintain your health as part of a healthy lifestyle. The antioxidants, hydrating properties, caffeine and fluoride found in tea mean that you need never feel guilty about reaching for the teapot.
Tea: The Amazing Plant
Tea is an evergreen plant having a healthy lifetime of nearly 100 years! Tea is actually a tree! When left to grow, it will reach 12 to 15 meters height. The scientific name of Tea is Camellia sinensis. It belongs to the family Theaceae (which has about 30 genera and 500 species). The genus Camellia has 82 species and except tea, most of them are ornamentals.
Camellia was named after a Moravian Jesuit, Rev. George Joseph Camellus (1661 -1706), who wrote about these wonder plants of Asian origin. Tea plants are classified into three major types, called jats, depending on their origin – Camellia sinensis (the China variety), Camellia assamica (the Assam variety) and Camellia assamica sub species lasiocalyx (the Cambod variety).
The word tea was derived from T’e in Amoy or Fukien dialect and ‘Cha’ from Cantonese dialect of China. Some Sanskrit scholars say that the word ‘Cha’ must have been derived from ’shatna pani’ an ancient medicinal concoction believed to be the extract oftea plant.
The First Tea Plants
The natural home of the tea plant is considered to be within the fan shaped area covering the Naga, Manipuri and Lushai Hills along the Assam – Burma frontier in the west, through to China, probably as far as the Che-Kiang (Shejiang) province in the east, and from this line generally south through the hills of Burma and Thailand in to Vietnam. Tea came to Japan around 593 AD. Buddhist monks are supposed to have brought tea to the land. A Buddhist monk named ‘Gyoki’ is believed to have built forty nine Buddhist temples in Japan in each of which he planted tea. Another Emperor called Saga decreed that tea be planted for royal consumption and drunk in royal banquets. Tea being an integral part of Zen rituals (later came to be known as ‘Cha No Yu’ – the famous Japanese tea ceremony) it flourished in Japan.
It was the British who introduced scientific tea cultivation in India in the late 18lh Century and early part of 19th Century. It is stated that in China monkeys were reportedly used to gather tea leaves in the formative years. And the early tea pluckers in India rode on elephants to pluck tea leaves. Today many motorized harvesting machines are being used for harvesting. From hand and feet rolling, tea manufacturing has come of age with fully automated tea processing systems in place.
