Chakyo (The Classic of Tea) (茶経)
"Chakyo" (The Classic of Tea) is a book written by Lu Yu around eighth century in Tang Dynasty China. It covers the knowledge of tea at the time. It consists of three volumes.
Summary
Chakyo is the oldest book on tea, and it is thought to have been written around 760. The content mentioned below was written in perfect order, and are profound enough for the work to have "Classic" in its title. However, the book was written about brick tea, which different from the non-powdered & powdered green tea popular in Japan. Nevertheless, its content describes more than just how to drink tea, and spiritual descriptions that led to the Japanese tea ceremony can be seen.
Content
Chakyo consists of the following ten chapters.
Volume I
Chapter 1 : Explanation of the tea tree
Chapter 2 : List and explanation of implements for producing tea
Chapter 3 : Warnings for producing tea
Volume II
Chapter 4 : List and explanation of tools for drinking tea
Volume III
Chapter 5 : Warnings for making tea
Chapter 6 : How to drink tea and other related matters
Chapter 7 : List of tea records
Chapter 8 : Tea producing areas
Chapter 9 : Omissible implements
Chapter 10 : Recommendation to transcribe the text of Chakyo on a scroll or the like for hanging on a wall