Masala incense

 

The main sense of a masala is that it only uses ground natural ingredients - flowers, plants, herbs, woods, resins, spices - for the fragrant ingredients. However, it appears to have long been acceptable to use fragrant oils to supplement the dried ingredients, and while it may originally have been pure, natural essential oils that were used, these days the fragrant oils may be mostly or entirely fragrance oils - that is the oils may be synthetic, or may be essential oils diluted with a carrier such as DEP.  

The oldest source on incense is the set of sacred Hindu texts, the Vedas, particularly the Atharva Veda and the Rig Veda, which set out and encouraged a uniform method of making incense. Although the texts mention the use of incense for masking odours and creating a pleasurable smell, the modern system of organized incense-making was likely created by the medicinal priests of the time. So, modern, organized incense-making is  linked to the Ayurvedic medical system in which it is rooted. The method of incense making with a bamboo stick as a core originated in India at the end of the 19th century, largely replacing the rolled, extruded or shaped method which is still used in India for dhoops and cones, and for most shapes of incense in Nepal/Tibet and Japan. Other main forms of incense are cones and logs and benzoin resin (sambrani), which are incense paste formed into pyramid shapes or log shapes, and then dried.

Dhoop is the older form of incense making which spread to other Asian countries such as China, Nepal, and Japan where it remains as the principle incense making process.  Dhoop incense doesn't use a bamboo stick. The wood paste, binders and fragrant ingredients are mixed together as a masala and allowed to dry, though some dhoops contain ingredients such as honey and ghee which keep them moist - these are known as wet dhoop, and such dhoops were traditionally made in the North of India.

Incense made with bamboo sticks was originally a Mysore tradition, that, under two Mysore businessmen, T.L. Upadyaya and Attar Khasim Saheb, became an organised industry which introduced the use of a central bamboo stick around 1900 as a way to simplify and speed up production as it could be taught easily to women who could make the sticks at home.. Mysore incense with a bamboo stick core  was exhibited at the British Empire Exhibition of 1924, and distributed as gifts to influential people in the West. As such, incense with bamboo sticks became the most prominent form of incense in India, largely, though not completely, replacing the older dhoop style. Mysore incense  has recently  been granted geographical indication status by the Indian government after an application in 2005 by the All India Agarbathi Manufacturers Association.

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, in the traditional method, while still moist, immediately rolled into and coated with a woody mixture called melnoorva to prevent the finished products from sticking together. Melnoorva is usually made from a mixture of charcoal powder and jigat (also called joss powder, jiggat, jiggit) which is fine powdered tree bark. It is then left for several days to dry.

Various resins, such as amber, myrrh, frankincense, and halmaddi are used in traditional masala incense, usually as a fragrant binding ingredient, and these may 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. Here is a video made about Haria, in which it is shown how halmaddi is used as a binder and carrier of the fragrant ingredients in the incense. The owner says there is no scent to halmaddi itself, though I found there is a scent - mild and neutral, but certainly a scent. 

Around 1900 in India the bamboo method was introduced. This enabled incense to be made on a larger scale, as bamboo stick incense required less training to make. The bamboo stick itself is neutral, and just holds the fragrant paste. There are three forms of bamboo incense - some have just a dhoop paste rolled around them, so they are like Japanese incense, but with a neutral bamboo core, others have a basic dhoop paste rolled around them, and while still wet the stick is rolled into a powder of fragrant ingredients (a masala) - these masala or natural incense sticks are highly regarded in India and by many incense lovers around the world, yet these are also not expensive. The most prized masala incenses use halmaddi, a binding resin which has fragrant qualities of its own. The final bamboo stick type is what the Indians call perfumed, and the West calls perfume-dipped. They are bamboo sticks with an unfragranced charcoal or wood powder paste which are dipped into a scent. The scent can be essential oils, and such perfumed incense can be very fine. But sometimes the scents are cheap chemical blends. The blends themselves may be acceptable, but the main drawback to this method is that chemical scents evaporate. This may have been what has happened with your Hem incense. It is not the bamboo stick you can smell, but the base wood or charcoal powder. Some incense companies will use good quality charcoal or wood powder, but some, like HEM, will use the cheapest. A company like Goloka (which only make masala incense) uses coconut husks as the base burning material as this does not give off any bad aromas, and does not harm the atmosphere as does wood or charcoal. They make very fine incense. Not expensive. And all the money goes to help women and children in India.  Some masala incense will also be dipped in fragrant oils. And some masala sticks will be machine made. The essential difference between natural/masala incense and perfumed/perfume-dipped is that in perfumed, the scent is coming entirely from the liquid scent or perfume, while in masala it comes from the solid ingredients which may be augmented by essential oils.


Curious info from Incensum:

Masala incense refers to a kind of incense made in South India, by combining special resins  with fragrances.  This type of incenses delivers the best result in terms of fragrance quality, shelf life and the general ambience provided by the incense.  The knowledge of the manufacturing process of Masala incense is proprietary to traditional incense makers of South India.

 

This process has 2 varieties, WET MASALA sticks and SEMI DRY MASALA sticks.

Semi dry masala mixture combines powdered charcoal with natural resins and use  minimal  organic content in the incense mixture.  This way the fragrance rendered will stay more faithful to the name of the fragrance.  Incensum incense are  Semi Dry Masala incenses.

 

In other words, a Jasmine - semi dry masala stick will stay more faithful to the fragrance of Jasmine than Jasmine - wet masala sticks.   

 

Wet Masala sticks also contain a higher amount of a native resin known by the name Halmaddy or Almaty which is ^_hygroscopic. (property  of a matter to absorb atmospheric moisture) 

 

Hygroscopic Almaatty creates 2 major problems for high grade incenses:

 

1.  Due to absorption of moisture, the stick catches mould especially in coastal areas and in tropics and sub-tropics where atmospheric humidity is high. 

 

2.  The resin is derived from the tree  ^{_{Ailanthus Malabarica}} , a native to South Indian Rain Forests.  It is from the family  ^{_Magnoliaceae}  whose resin has a heavy sweet base note.  Many wet masala sticks get ‘corrupted’ by this resin due to its heavy, sweet base note and does not stay faithful to the fragrance.  More over, this resin is the single most important reason that many Indian incenses are felt “too heavy” for the temperate climatic conditions of Europe or North America.

 

It is in this aspect, that the SEMI-DRY masala sticks becomes the clear winner of all types of incenses.  Semi – Dry Masala sticks provide, the cleanest fragrance at the maximum burning time, with a maximum shelf life as opposed to any other type of manufacturing process.  

The Indian term "masala" means a mix or blend of ingredients; the term is commonly used in cooking to refer to a blend of flavourings or spices, such as chicken tikka masala and masala chai (a tea flavoured with spices). The term is also used in incense making to refer to incenses made with a blend of aromatic ingredients: masala incense.  Masala incenses are often called "natural" in India (or sometimes "flora", as such incense is made from plants and flowers). Masala incense may include scented liquid, usually pure essential oils, though the liquid scent may be a perfume, or an essential oil diluted with something like an "agarbatti oil" which is usually diethyl phthalate (DEP). Masala incenses which contain a significant amount of essential oils may be termed wet masala or flora, fluxo, supreme or durbar. 

While masala incense "may" include a perfume or essential oil diluted with DEP, all perfumed incenses are made that way.  Fair Trade Incense Works claim that 98% of Indian incense dilutes fragrant oil with DEP or agarbatti oil.

When I first burned incense I assumed that the powder covering the dried paste on the stick was the fine masala fragrant ingredients, and that the powder itself signified that the stick was a proper job masala. I have since learned from manufacturers (and such documents that are available) that the powder is there partly to stop the sticks from gluing together as they dry, partly as decoration, and partly to give the impression that the stick is a masala, as that is what people expect to see. However, the dried fragrant masala ingredients are stirred into the charcoal paste before being applied to the stick. Indeed, without the coating of wood powder, folks couldn't always tell just by looking if a stick used dried fragrant ingredients (flowers, herbs, resins, roots, spices, etc) or the scent came only from a perfume or liquid fragrance.  Yes, sometimes it is obvious, particularly on cheap, basic perfumed-charcoal sticks, or conversely on dhoops where flecks of dried ingredients can be seen within the dried paste; but other times it is less clear. And when, as here, a volatile liquid fragrance has been used, the whole question of masala or perfumed, becomes less certain. The more sticks I burn, the more I am aware that modern Indian incense relies heavily on liquid fragrances - absolutes, essentials, natural perfumes, or cheap solvents usually mainly chemical.  

Some manufacturers apply a generous fluffy amount of powder, others barely any, and others still have the paste fully covered, but with no excess.


(to be finished....)