ea originated in Southwest China during the Shang dynasty, where it was used as a medicinal drink.[6] An early credible record of tea drinking dates to the 3rd century AD, in a medical text written by Hua Tuo.[7] It was popularized as a recreational drink during the Chinese Tang dynasty, and tea drinking spread to other East Asian countries. Portuguese priests and merchants introduced it to Europe during the 16th century.[8] During the 17th century, drinking tea became fashionable among Britons, who started large-scale production and commercialization of the plant in India. Combined, China and India supplied 62% of the world's tea in 2016.A third form, the increasingly widespread chai, came from Persian چای [tʃɒːi] chay. Both the châ and chây forms are found in Persian dictionaries.[23] They are derived from the Northern Chinese pronunciation of chá,[24] which passed overland to Central Asia and Persia, where it picked up the Persian grammatical suffix -yi before passing on to Russian as чай ([tɕæj], chay), Arabic as شاي (pronounced shay [ʃæiː] due to the lack of a /t͡ʃ/ sound in Arabic), Urdu as چائے chay, Hindi as चाय chāy, Turkish as çay, etc.[25] The few exceptions of words for tea that do not fall into the three broad groups of te, cha and chai are mostly from the minor languages from the botanical homeland of the tea plant from which the Chinese words for tea might have been borrowed originally.[15] English has all three forms: cha or char (both pronounced /tʃɑː/), attested from the 16th