Tea was first drunk in China. Even the words ‘chai’ and ‘chini’ are from Chinese. It goes back to 2700 B.C. In the 16th century, tea came to Europe and was drunk more as a medicine than as a beverage. Assam has the largest concentration of tea plantations in the world. There are large groups of women with bamboo baskets on their backs. They pluck the newly sprouted tea leaves from the plants and store them in the baskets.

There are many popular legends about the discovery of tea. Two of them are as follows – A Chinese emperor was used to drinking boiled water. One day a twig from the fire fell into the pot in which water was being boiled. It gave a delicious flavour to the drink. It is said that those were tea leaves. An Indian legend goes like this. Once there was a Buddhist ascetic who used to feel sleepy during meditations. So he cut off his eyelids. Ten tea plants grew out of the eyelids. When the leaves from these plants were put in hot water and drunk they banished sleep.