战国以前无茶考

NO TEA BEFORE THE WARRING STATES PERIOD

本文考辨了先秦古籍中有关“荼”字的各种含义，对被误认为今之茶的“咤”、“葭萌”、“”等字的确切释义也作了逐条考辨。笔者认为：茶起源于战国以后。有些论著之所以产生认识上的迷误，不外乎三个原因：一是对史料的认识和理解有意、无意间发生了偏差；二是由于缺乏必要的小学知识，对“荼”字的形、音、义进行望文生义的曲解、臆解；三是古书在长期流传过程中产生的鲁鱼之讹导致的夹缠不清。文献资料和考古成果证明：战国以前无茶，茶当起源于秦汉之际，这丝毫无损于中国是茶的原产地。

Examining different meanings of the character of cha in pre-Qin literature, the author suggests that the character of cha in works before the Watring States period cannot be explained as 'tea'.There are three reasons why the character of cha has been misionterpreted as tea: First, some biases, intentional or unintentional, have ekisted in the understanding of pre-Qin works; Second, some scholars have distorted the character of cha when thay try to analyze the shape, the pronunciation and the mening of it because of lacking a good training of Chinese traditional philological studies; Third and finally,some mistakes or errors have been made to the texts of pre-Qin works during their transmission of two millennia. These mistakes or errors have caused may misunderstandings.It is the point of the author that there was no tea and tea drinking before the Warring States Period and they originated only in the QinHan transition, not any earlier. This point, supported by the developmend in textual research of pre-Qin works and by recent archaeologist discoveries, is challenging those conventions which believe that tea happened before the Warring States Period, but it does not harm the conclusion that tea originated in China.