Incense of India

India is the world's main incense producing country, and is a healthy exporter to other countries (though export sales have been troubled by increasing costs of the raw materials, and by other factors, such as Western countries buying unperfumed sticks, and by Indian companies producing fakes or imitations). Incense burning has taken place in India for thousands of years, and India exported the idea to China and Japan, and other Asian countries.

The main method of burning incense in India is the incense stick or agarbathi. The basic ingredients of an incense stick are bamboo sticks, paste (generally made of charcoal dust or sawdust and joss/jiggit/gum/tabu powder – an adhesive made from the bark of litsea glutinosa and other trees), and the perfume ingredients – which traditionally would be a masala (powder of ground ingredients), though more commonly is a solvent of perfumes and/or essential oils. After the base paste has been applied to the bamboo stick, it is either, in the traditional method, while still moist, immediately rolled into the masala, or, more commonly, left for several days to dry, and then dipped into the scented solvent. Various resins, such as amber, myrrh, frankincense, and halmaddi are used in traditional masala incense, usually as a fragrant binding ingredient, and these will add their distinctive fragrance to the finished incense. Some resins, such as gum Arabic, may be used where it is desirable for the binding agent to have no fragrance of its own. Halmaddi has a particular interest to Western consumers, possibly through its association with the popular Satya Nag Champa. It is an earth coloured liquid resin drawn from the Ailanthus triphysa tree; as with other resins, it is a viscous semi-liquid when fresh, it hardens to a brittle solid as it evaporates and ages. Some incense makers mix it with honey in order to keep it pliable. Due to crude extraction methods which resulted in trees dying, by the 1990s the Forest Department in India had banned resin extraction; this forced up the price of halmaddi, so its usage in incense making declined. In 2011, extraction was allowed under leasing agreements, which increased in 2013, though production is still sufficiently limited for the resin to sometimes be stolen via improper extraction to be sold on the black market.

The bamboo method of incense making originated in India, and is distinct from the Nepal/Tibet and Japanese methods of stick making in which a bamboo stick is not used. Though the method is also used in the west, particularly in America, it is strongly associated with India. Other main forms of incense are cones and logs and Benzoin resin ( In Sanskrit Saambraani), which are incense paste formed into pyramid shapes or log shapes, and then dried.

A uniform and codified system of incense-making first began in India. Although Vedic texts mention the use of incense for masking odors and creating a pleasurable smell, the modern system of organized incense-making was likely created by the medicinal priests of the time. Thus, modern, organized incense-making is intrinsically linked to the Ayurvedic medical system in which it is rooted.

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