(1023 B.C.), landed in China in the year A.D. 510.
Probably a Brahmin or a Buddhist of great
austerity, he employed all his care to diffuse a
sense of religion, and for this purpose denied
himself rest, sleep, and relaxation. He lived
in the open air, and devoted himself day and
night to prayer and contemplation of the nature
and benificence of God, aiming at eventual
absorption into the Divine Essence when purified
by long prayer, fast, and vigil. Flesh is flesh,
however. After several years, worn out by
want of food and sleep, Darma the great and
good involuntarily closed his eyes, and after
that slept soundly, reckless of anything but
rest. Before dawn he awoke, full of sorrow and
despair at having thus broken his vow, snatched
up a knife and cut off both his offending eyelids.
When it grew light, he discovered that two
beautiful shrubs had grown from them, and
eating some of the leaves, he was presently
filled with new joy, courage, and strength to
pursue his holy meditations. The new plant
was the tea plant, and Darma recommended
the use of it to his disciples and followers.
Kempfer gives a portrait of this Chinese
and Japanese saint, at whose feet there is
always a reed to indicate that he had traversed
seas and rivers, and had come from afar.

The legend seems to prove that from the
earliest times tea was known among students
and austere people as a dispeller of drowsiness.
Its first use was no doubt accidental, as was
that of coffee, the virtues of which, the
Arab legend says, were discovered by some
goats who had browsed on leaves of the
coffee plant, and became unusually lively after
their meal. It is a singular fact, too, that
Jesuit writers who visited China in the reign of
James the First expressly state that they used
the herb tea common among the Chinese, and
found that it kept their eyes open and lessened
the fatigue of writing sermons and hearing
absolutions that lasted late into the night. No
doubt the figure of Darma and his reed could
be found on old China.

Our second Boheatic Myth is a legend about
Old China.

The island of Mauvi, now sunk deep in the
sea near the island of Formosa, was once wealthy
and flourishing, and its silken-clad pigtailed
people made the richest and finest porcelain in
the world. The King of Mauvi, being a pious
man, was warned in a dream by the gods, that
when the faces of two of the people's most
famous idols grew red, the island would
suddenly be destroyed, for the great wickedness of
its inhabitants (who were probably tea
merchants, i.e., tea adulteraters). Two very sharp
villains, hearing of this dream, went in the
night and at once incontinently painted both
the images a bright red, with a dash or two
of pea-green, upon which the king, without
due inquiry (though he proved right in the
end) instantly took ship, and started for
the south of China. As soon as he was gone,
the island settled down, with the two rascals,
the tea merchants, and all the porcelain. There
can be no doubt about the story, for the tops of
the highest rocks of Mauvi are still visible at low
water; and moreover, if any further proof was
needed, divers often venture down into the blue
depths, when the sharks are asleep above in the
sun, and recover old teapots, shaped like small
barrels, with short narrow necks, and of a
greenish-white colour. They used to be worth
about seven thousand pounds apiece when
cracked, and fissured, and having shells sticking
to them. An old Dutch writer computes the
price of the large and sound at five thousand
thails. Now, a thail is ten silver maas, and
ten maas are equal to seventy Dutch stivers,
and twelve stivers are worth thirteenpence of
our currency, and all that makes a heap of
money.

Many antiquarians (but not Dreikopf—oh,
no, no!) are of opinion that the Arabian
Malobathron—mentioned by the writer of the
Periplus (or first survey) of the Black Sea,
supposed to be Arrian, the learned preceptor of
Marcus Antoninus—is tea, as the golden fleece
is thought to be silk, and the Spartans' black
broth coffee; but we do not hold to this belief,
for, as Dreikopf knows, and Horace shows,
people put malobathron on their hair, not in
their stomachs. Ramusio, a Venetian writer
on geography, who died in 1557, mentions tea;
and so does Giovanni Botero, who, in 1589,
particularly praises tea as a "delicate juice
which takes the place of wine, and is good
for health and sobriety;" so also does Olearius,
whom the Duke of Holstein sent to Russia and
Persia. Gerard Bontius, a Leyden professor,
who invented diabolical Pills known as "Tartarean,"
and went to China in 1648, gave a
drawing of the plant. We hear of tea in
Europe in 1557 (the last year of the reign of
Queen Mary), and yet it was not till 1660
(the year of the Restoration) that we find
tea in pretty free use in England.

In 1660 (12 Carl. 2, c. 23) a duty of eightpence
a gallon was laid on all tea sold and made
in coffee-houses (started in London by Pasqua
Rosee, 1652). The tax-collectors visited the
houses daily, to ascertain what quantity of tea
had been made in the day. That same year
Thomas Garraway, landlord of Garraway's
Coffee House, near the Royal Exchange, started
as "tobacconist, and seller and retailer of tea
and coffee." "That the virtues and
excellencies of this leaf and drink," said Garraway
in a circular, "are many and great, is evident
and manifest by the high esteem and use of it
(especially of late years) among the physicians
and knowing men of France, Italy, Holland,
and other parts of Christendom; in
England it hath been sold in the leaf for six
pounds, and sometimes for ten pounds, the
pound weight; and in respect of its former
scarceness and dearness, it hath been only used
as a regalia in high treatments and entertainments,
and presents made thereof to princes
and grandees, till the year 1657. The said
Thomas Garraway did purchase a quantity
thereof, and first publicly sold the said tea in