National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

> > > >
Color New!IIIF Color HighRes Gray HighRes PDF   Japanese English
0380 Sino-Iranica : vol.1
Sino-Iranica : vol.1 / Page 380 (Color Image)

New!Citation Information

doi: 10.20676/00000248
Citation Format: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

OCR Text

 

554   SING-IRANICA

sio, in the posthumous introduction to his edition of Marco Polo published in 1545, mentions having learned of the tea beverage from a Persian merchant, Hajji Muhammed.1 A. DE MANDELSL0,2 in 1662, still reports that the Persians, instead of Thè, drink their Kahwa (coffee). In the fifteenth century, A-lo-tin, an envoy from Tien-fan (Arabia), in presenting his tribute to an emperor of the Ming, solicited tea-leaves.'

The Kew Bulletin for 1896 (p. 157) contains the following interesting information on " White Tea of Persia : " -

"In the Consular Report on the trade of Ispahan and Yezd (Foreign Office, Annual Series, 1896, No. 1662) the following particulars are given of the tea trade in Persia: Black or Calcutta tea for Persian consumption continues to arrive in steady quantities, 2,000,000 pounds representing last year's supply. White tea from China, or more particularly from Tongking, is consumed only in Yezd, and, therefore, the supply is limited.' Through the courtesy of Mr. John R. Preece, Her Majesty's Consul at Ispahan, Kew received a small quantity of the `White tea' above mentioned for the Museum of Economic Botany. The tea proved to be very similar to that described in the Kew Bulletin under the name of P`u-erh tea (Kew Bulletin, 1889, pp. 118 and 139). The finest of this tea is said to be reserved for the Court of Peking. The sample from Yezd was composed of the undeveloped leaf buds so thickly coated with fine hairs as to give them a silvery appearance. Owing to the shaking in transit some of the hairs had been rubbed off and had formed small

yellow pellets about   inch diameter. Although the hairs are much more
abundant than usual there is little doubt that the leaves have been derived from the Assam tea plant (Camellia theifera, Griff.) found wild in some parts of Assam and Burma but now largely cultivated in Burma, Tongking, etc. The same species has been shown to yield Lao tea (Kew Bulletin, 1892, p. 219), and Leppett tea (Kew Bulletin, 1896, p. I0). The liquor from the Persian white tea was of a pale straw colour with the delicate flavour of good China tea. It is not unknown but now little appreciated in the English market."

  1. The Arabic stone-book sailing under the false flag of Aristotle distinguishes several kinds of onyx (jiza'), which come from two places, China and the country of the west, the latter being the finest. Qazwini gives Yemen and China as localities, telling an anecdote that the Chinese disdain to quarry the stone and leave this to specially privileged slaves, who have no other means of livelihood and sell the stone only

outside of China.4 As formerly stated,' this may be the pi yü   of
the Chinese.

  1. Qazwini also mentions a stone under the name husyat iblis ("devil's testicles ") which should occur in China. Whoever carries it is

or Hobson-Jobson, p. 906.

1 YULE, Cathay, new ed., Vol. I, p. 292;

2 Travels, p. 15.

3 BRETSCHNEIDER, Mediœval Researches,

4 J. RUSKA, Steinbuch des Aristoteles, p. 12; LECLERC, Traité des simples, Vol. I, p.

5 Notes on Turquois, p. 52.

Vol. II, p. 300.

p. 145; and Steinbuch des Qazwini, 354.