Harpreet Singh Swatch
In today’s social life, tea has become an important part of etiquette. Serving tea to guests has become a basic principle of hospitality. Different types of tea are available in the market today according to health and taste. In the rural culture, the tea pot does not come off the stove all day long. In urban culture, tea stalls are common on the streets.
However, the food and drink of the people of every state of our country is different, but tea is one such thing, which is consumed by the people of almost every state. Today, after water, the most widely consumed liquid in the world is tea. At present there are more than 1500 varieties of tea found in the world and India is the largest producer of tea in the world after China. Tea is not the original crop of our country but it is a gift of the British. The cup of tea we hold today has traveled a long way from the forests to our homes.
If we talk about the origin or history of tea, there are various legends about it, but it is clearly evident that tea was invented in China and from China it reached the rest of the world. According to a folk tale, a Chinese emperor was boiling spring water for drinking in the forest and suddenly some leaves of a bush fell into the boiling water. Attracted by its fragrance, the emperor drank the water containing the leaves and liked its taste. He planted its saplings all over the country. It was the world’s first green tea. Similarly, according to another folk tale, a Buddhist monk vowed to stay awake for a long time and do penance, but after some time his eyes began to close due to sleep, so he cut off his eyelids with a knife in anger and threw them away. In the place where the eyelids were thrown, tea plants grew in the same place, the consumption of which removes sleep.
Of course, tea was invented in China, but it was brought to the world by the British. It is believed that in 1662, Prince Charles II of Britain married Princess Catherine of Portugal and Catherine brought tea leaves with her. The British had not tasted tea till then. Princess Catherine made all the people of the palace drink tea with her own hands and their mouths felt such sips of tea that the prince urged the East India Company to start the tea business and through the East India Company, the British sold half of the tea. Delivered to the world, including India. It is also believed that the tea was drunk in China by an English merchant who, impressed by its taste, imported it to Britain through the East India Company. In 1823, tea plantations were first planted in Assam and Darjeeling by the British. According to some historians, tea bushes were already growing in the forests of Assam, which were discovered by the British officer Robert Bruce. After this, the trade of tea started in India and the Indian people became so crazy about tea that today, except for a few people out of 140 crore Indians, there is hardly any person who does not drink tea.
According to an Indian folk tale about tea, in ancient times, a sage prepared Ayurvedic medicine by boiling the leaves of a plant in water with ginger, black pepper, and cloves, which was later made into tea. popularized Initially, green tea was prepared by boiling only fresh tea leaves in water, but gradually the tea leaves were stored in a special way, from which black tea came into being. With time, spices started to be used in it and then milk was also used. While India’s black tea is popular worldwide, China’s green tea is still world famous.
The value and importance of tea in ancient times can also be estimated from the fact that a heavy tax was imposed on tea by a Chinese emperor, due to which tea smuggling started. At present, there are large tea gardens in many places like Assam, Darjeeling, Munnar, Ooty etc. and there are also factories of big companies, where tea is produced from 100 rupees to 1 lakh rupees per kilo. is There is also a type of tea in China, the price of which is fixed in crores.
Once I had the opportunity to visit Darjeeling, an employee of a large tea factory there told me that the real leaf tea produced here is processed and exported abroad while the scraps left behind are packed in packets of reputed companies. It is sold in our country. Professor Harpal Singh Pannu mentions in one of his articles that Kakuzo Okakura, a Japanese philosopher friend of Professor Puran Singh, was so crazy about tea that he wrote an entire book on tea. Professor Puran Singh often insisted on taking an indoor ablution before an outdoor ablution, and most people did not understand his reasoning. In fact, they used to call drinking tea an inner bath. A cup of hot tea in winters is a different pleasure. Now, you too have tea.
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