[Assam] Fw: First indigenous tea planter

[Rajen & Ajanta Barua]

Some facts and news about tea:

Quote fron article: "Romancing the Camellia Assamica" - Rajen Barua:

Until early nineteenth century, the Western botanists believed that the tea plant was indigenous to China, and that its natural growth was confined to China only. Probably it was due to the fact that before the advent of the modern tea industry, tea was much more ingrained to the Chinese culture than to the Indian. It is an unquestioned historical fact that tea was first cultivated in China. In India, it was mostly the Singphows, the Khamtis, the Nagas and other tribes in Assam who used to chew and drink tea. They used to brew the wild tea leaves without much conditioning, and drink the liquor or chew the tea-balls. The habit of tea drinking was also prevalent among the Assamese in the Brahmaputra valley at least as a medicine because we find a tenth century Sanskrit medical text from Assam called Nidana (the Science of Diagnosis) that mentions leaves called shamapatra from which shamapani is made. This has been quoted by some source on Hinduism from the book Cha Garam of Arup Kumar Dutta. This is probably the first mention of tea in India. We also find a record of a Dutch traveler, Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, who noted in 1598 that the Indians ate the leaves as a vegetable with garlic and oil, and boiled the tree leaves to make a brew(2). Montfort Chamney, a British tea planter and writer of Assam during the early days, states, "The tea plant is not indigenous to China and the seed from which it was first grown there is traditionally said to have been brought to China from Assam. Professor J. W. Gregory's recent volume 'The Story of the Road' shows that silk and other oriental merchandise were regularly conveyed between India and China by road or land track established prior to the period 2600 B. C." (2) Lu Yu, the eighth century Chinese master records in his classic, Ch'a Ching that "Tea is from a grand tree from the South."(1) Moreover in recent years new evidences have led the scientists to revise their perception. The Camellia teas originated in the foothills of the Himalayas, in the region between Assam, Burma and Yunnan province where the first Homo Sapiens arrived some sixty to hundred thousand years ago. Today this region produces some of the finest teas in the world that are marketed as Assam teas and Yunnan teas. 

 Now Here are some recent news fro Assam:



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