Tea originated in China, and tea cultivation, tea drinking, tea tasting, and tea ceremony have a history of thousands of years in China, and its influence has spread overseas. Whether it is the seven things that the people opened the door," "chai rice oil salt sauce vinegar tea", or the literati Yashi's "Qinqi calligraphy and painting poetry wine tea", it shows that tea is an important part of the daily life of Chinese, and the tea culture derived from it is even more profound. So for everyone who loves tea so much, do you really understand how the word "tea" comes from?
Regarding the origin of the word "tea", most people believe that the word "tea" before the Middle Tang Dynasty (about the 8th century AD) is the word "荼". The word "荼" was first found in the Book of Poetry, but the "荼" mentioned in many Psalms in the Book of Poetry is not tea. The first to explicitly include the meaning of the word "tea" in the word "荼" is the "槚, bitter dip" in the Erya Shimu. Guo Pu's "Erya Notes" of the Jin Dynasty also made a more detailed note on this: "The tree is as small as a gardenia, winter life (meaning evergreen), and the leaves can be boiled as soup." In the early 2nd century AD, Xu Shen of the Eastern Han Dynasty also said in his book "Commentaries on the Interpretation of Texts": "荼, bitter tea also." This "荼" character, according to xu xuan and others in the Song Dynasty, said in the notes of the book, "this is the tea character of today."
From the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Three Kingdoms, the four series of printed "tea" characters are celadon in the collection of the Huzhou Museum
The fraternal ethnic groups in the southwestern part of the mainland have long known "tea" (see the preceding quotations of Sima Xiang such as the "Fan General" and Yang Xiong's "Dialect"), pronounced "荈" or "蔎". Since the Qin and Han dynasties, when tea was spread from the southwest to the vast number of Han ethnic areas, because of its bitter taste and pronunciation similar to the word "荼", "荼" is used to express the drug and beverage "tea".
Commentary on the Tea Sutra
The word "荼" has more than one sound, and its meaning is not only one. The word "荼" was used to express the meaning of "tea" for a long time, and only later did it save a stroke and become the word "tea". This change is said to have been influenced by Lu Yu's Tea Classics and Lu Tong's Tea Song (see Song of Tea in The Song Dynasty wei Yi Weng's Records of the First Tea of Qiongzhou), and was agreed by Yang Shen of the Ming Dynasty (see Miscellaneous Records of Dan Lead) and Gu Yanwu of the Qing Dynasty (see Tang Yunzheng). However, this statement does not correspond to the statement of the commentary on the Tea Classic, which clearly states that the source of the word "tea" is the "Phonetic Meaning of the Kaiyuan Text". Thirty volumes of the Kaiyuan Character Phonetic Meaning, written by Tang Xuanzong. (The "Yinyi of The Kaiyuan Characters" has been written, and Emperor Xuanzong once wrote a preface to this book, saying that it is a character book similar to the "Shuowen" and "Zilin", all three hundred and twenty parts) This shows that the word "荼" was omitted and set as the current "tea" character, which was determined by Tang Xuanzong in the form of imperial writing. However, when this new script was just beginning to be used, the old and new scripts were bound to be used for a long time, and after the Anshi Rebellion, it was followed by a period of turmoil in the division of the feudal towns for many years, so Gu Yanwu said in "Tang Yunzheng":
Yuyu Taishan Daiyue, look at the inscription of the Tang Dynasty, see the fourteenth year of the Gregorian calendar (779) carved di characters, Zhenyuan fourteen years (798) carved di medicinal characters, all made of di ... At that time, the font has not changed. By the first year of Huichang (841), Liu Gongquan's book "Xuanmi Pagoda Inscription" and the ninth year of Da Zhong (855) Pei Xiu's book "Guifeng Zen Master's Stele" chabi character, both subtracted from this painting, then this character changed to the Middle Tang Dynasty below.
Therefore, when Lu Yu wrote the "Tea Classic", he was able to change the "荼" character to the word "tea" under the condition that the word "荼" was still used by many people, so that the word "tea" could be widely spread, which could not but be said to be a unique initiative of his insight. Later, with the development of tea production and trade, the special word "tea" in the meaning of the sound, after about 80 years, was finally accepted by the majority of the people.
Ming Ding Yunpeng Boiling Tea Diagram (Partial) Collection of Wuxi Municipal Museum
In addition, the word "荼" was subtracted from a painting and changed to the word "tea", which was pronounced as the current "tea" sound, and there is another theory that it began after the Liang Dynasty (502-557) of the Southern Dynasty. (See Gu Yanwu's "Qiu Gulu" of the Qing Dynasty) In fact, from the pronunciation point of view, the word "荼" in the Han Dynasty already had a character pronunciation similar to the tea sound, such as the "荼" of the "DiLing" in the "Book of Han and Geographical Records", Yan Shi's ancient note: Yin Yi luxury anti, and also yin Zhangjia reverse. Therefore, the "Qiongzhou Xiancha Record" says that Although Yan Shigu "has been transferred to tea tone, he did not dare to change the character text".
The Tea Classic also lists four synonymous words for "tea" before the Tang Dynasty: 槚, 蔎, 荈. However, in ancient books before the Tang Dynasty, such as the Book of Poetry, the Shennong Materia Medica, the Shennong Food Classic, and other books, there are records of the word "荼", and some of the "荼" characters refer to "tea". Since Lu Yu had already changed the word "荼" to the word "tea" in the Tea Classic, he did not include the word "荼" in the synonym.
Song Liu Songnian Tea Drawing (Partial) Collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei
The word "tea" has been widely adopted since the Middle and Tang Dynasties, but the mainland is vast, the dialects are different, and the pronunciation of tea characters is also very different. In Guangdong Province, for example, the pronunciation near Guangzhou is "chá" and the pronunciation near Shantou is "tè (tay)". Another example is Fujian Province, Where Fuzhou is pronounced "tá", while Xiamen's pronunciation is similar to Shantou's "tè". The Yangtze River Basin and North China are pronounced "chái", "zhou", "chà" and so on. As for the fraternal ethnic areas, the pronunciation is even more different, such as the Dai people called "la", the Yao and Miao people called "jihu" and "jihu", the Qiannan Miao called "chútā", and so on.
Since the export of mainland tea to foreign countries, countries around the world have also had translated names of tea, such as "お茶" in Japanese and "чай" in Russian, all of which are derived from the original sound of the word "tea". The English "tea" and the French "thé" are also translated according to the pronunciation of the people in the coastal areas of Guangdong and Fujian on the mainland.
In recent years, in the excavation of the Mawangdui Western Han Tomb in Changsha, the mainland has found many cultural relics such as Jianwen and Shushu, including Tomb No. 1 (160 BC) and Tomb No. 3 (165 BC), and their burial lists have bamboo and wooden inscriptions of "Yi Zhen" and "笥". Some people have deduced that this "" character is a variant of "槚", the so-called "Yi 笥" or "笥", that is, "槚 (bitter 荼) a box" or "槚 (苦荼) box", thus indicating that Hunan had tea drinking habits and tea production at that time. This discovery provides physical evidence for the "荼" of the Western Han Dynasty Wang Bao's statement in the article "The Covenant of Servants" that "cooks all the utensils" and "Wuyang maidi" is "di". Wuyang is now Pengshan County, Sichuan. However, the Taiping Imperial Records compiled by Li Fang and others in the Song Dynasty, as well as Fan Wenlan's General History of China, wrote "Wuyang" as "Wudu". Wudu (武都), equivalent to present-day Wudu County, ChengXian County, HuiXian County, Xihe, Liangdang, Kang County, and Shaanxi Feng County, Luoyang County, Gansu. It is inconceivable that Wang Bao of Sichuan did not buy tea in the Shu land where tea was produced, but sent servants to Shaanxi and Gansu in the northwest region to buy tea. However, whether it is "Wuyang" or "Wudu", judging from the full text of Wang Bao's "Covenant of Servants", it is purely a game article, whether it is Wang Zheng's own work, or whether it was written by posterity in the name of Wang Zhao, it is still difficult to determine, so its authenticity is questionable.
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