NODE / 0238attestedPersian

چای

TRANSLITERATION čāy

tea

DATE: Persian, reported by the 11th century
SENSE: tea beverage
FAMILY: Indo-European / Iranian
CANONICAL KEY: node:19:cay:attested:sense:tea-beverage

Graph-only overland branch documented by Encyclopaedia Iranica as derived from Chinese ch’a.

ANCESTRAL EDGES

ROOT OF THIS ROOT

GO DEEPERborrowingprobable

Mandarin Chinese · modern Mandarin · tea beverage

茶

tea

SOUND: Persian čāy is reported as derived from Chinese ch’a, retaining the cha onset and adding the final glide represented in Persian transliteration.
MEANING: The meaning remains tea.
CHRONOLOGY: Chinese to Persian overland transmission; Persian awareness is reported by the 11th century.
SCHOLAR: Daniel Balland · Marcel Bazin
CONFIDENCE: probable — Encyclopaedia Iranica gives the Chinese derivation but says the date and mechanism of Persian adoption remain uncertain.

ČĀY — TeasupportsHeadword etymology and The spread of tea in the Persian world

Derives Persian čāy from Chinese ch’a while explicitly preserving uncertainty over when Persian speakers first encountered the beverage.

ORIGINAL ↗

چای — لغت‌نامه دهخداcontextDehkhoda headword چای and Chinese-origin note

Documents the Persian lexeme and its lexicographic Chinese attribution.

ORIGINAL ↗

OPEN CANONICAL EDGE 233 ↗

DIRECT DESCENDANT EDGES

THE NEXT HISTORICAL STEP

No reviewed descendants currently reuse this node. Absence describes the graph, not the entire history of the form.

TRANSITIVE DESCENDANT CLOSURE

EVERY REVIEWED BRANCH FROM HERE

This is the complete downstream closure currently supported by the canonical graph. Every displayed step is a real reviewed edge with its own sound claim, meaning claim, scholar, confidence, and citations.

UNIQUE DESCENDANT NODES: 0
REVIEWED EDGES: 0
DEEPEST PATH: 0
MODERN DOSSIERS REACHED: 0

No downstream edge has cleared review for this node. This is a graph-coverage statement, not a claim that the historical form produced nothing.

“Every” means every descendant in the reviewed SET-U graph. It does not convert missing scholarship or missing ingestion into a claim of historical completeness. The coverage ledger remains the honest denominator.

RECORDED EVIDENCE

ATTESTATIONS / FIRST KNOWN USE

SOURCE-REPORTEDlexical corpus recordprobable

first half of the 11th century, source-reported

Bīrūnī discussion of čāy

čāy and its use in China and Tibet

چای dossier · recorded as چای

Encyclopaedia IranicaWITNESS RECORD ↗ČĀY — Tea ↗

EDITORIAL REUSE

WORD DOSSIERS USING THIS NODE

01چایچای · established