Tea, Jia, She, Ming, Chuan: A History of Five Names

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Thesis

Chapter One lists five names — 茶, 槚, 蔎, 茗, 荈 — and notes that the character may take the grass, wood, or both radicals. This is not a casual synonym list. It records parallel regional and textual names before 茶 became the standard word.

槚 appears in the Erya; 蔎 is a south-western dialect word; 茗 and 荈 are sometimes distinguished by early or late picking. By placing them side by side, Lu Yu admits that tea had a local language history before it had a unified written name.

Using 茶 today is convenient, but it hides that layer. Keeping the old names while reading is not antiquarianism; it reminds us that the concept was unified later than the plant was known.

Source: 维基文库·茶经/一之源

This piece pulls “Tea, Jia, She, Ming, Chuan: A History of Five Names” back into the text. The first move is to limit the claim: Lu Yu writes about Tang tea, Tang soil and Tang brewing; change the conditions and the conclusion has to be rewritten.

From the making side, a small change in plucking standard changes the sweet-bitter balance in the cup. The sentence is not a study-room abstraction; it has an operational background.

Modern tea science can split it into cultivar, soil, light and plucking variables, but the variables must be put back together. Using one of them to prove the whole passage is over-reading.

Textual caution still matters. Chapter One has variants, especially around 其字, 其名 and the plant description; cite the edition or the argument may rest on sand.