Masala incense (also known as natural or traditional) is regarded as a better quality incense than perfumed or perfume-dipped. The original sense of a masala incense is that it uses ground natural ingredients - flowers, plants, herbs, woods, resins, spices - for the fragrant ingredients. The word "masala" means mixed spices, or a variety of ingredients. The ground ingredients would be mixed into a charcoal paste along with binders and fixatives, and then hand-rolled onto a bamboo stick, before being finished with a (generally brown) powder called melnoorva made from crushed tree bark. The melnoorva powder helps to dry the paste, and prevent sticks gluing together. A number of people these days are referring to the melnoorva as "masala powder". It is what it is, and a number of Indian incense houses use the melnoorva powder to signify masala, even when the fragrant ingredients are purely perfumes; so there is a sense that as the melnoorva is a signifier of what the incense maker wants the buyer to believe is a masala incense, that calling the powder masala powder makes sense; however, I feel that is driving us further away from the essential quality and tradition of proper masala incense - which is dried fragrant ingredients rather than oils or perfumes.
What I have learned since starting this blog in 2013 is that most "masala" incense these days uses "perfume" - fragrance oils composed of natural and/or synthetic aromatic compounds. I have been studying perfume, and I'm now aware that as regards olfactory appreciation, quality is not measured by synthetic v natural, as some natural fragrances are difficult or impossible to capture, or perform poorly when extracted, so synthetics are widely used. The most expensive and admired perfumes are a blend of synthetics and naturals. What matters more than synthetic v natural, is the amount of fragrance oils used - or the purity. In the perfume world the highest concentration of fragrance is called "parfum", this passes down through Eau de toilette to Eau fraiche (or body mist) - which contains the lowest (and therefore usually the cheapest) concentration of fragrance compounds. The amount of perfume used in an incense will generally determine the power/clarity of the fragrance (and the price). Other factors help - such as the binding material, burning material (charcoal is the purest), the carrier (which is used to dilute the perfume), and the fixative (which disperses the scent and allows it to linger); but without an appropriate dose of aromatic compounds (perfume/fragrance oil or dried natural ingredients) the quality of the binders or fixatives won't amount to much. It is unlikely that using a lot of fixative (usually some form of gum or resin, such as benzoin, frankincense, gum Arabic, or halmaddi) will overcome using a thin perfume or equivalent of Eau fraiche - though Japanese and Thai incense houses appear to specialise in using delicate amounts of fragrance ingredients, and can be very successful. In Indian incense, which is used frequently every day rather than in discrete limited moments of concentration, what is generally appreciated is a heady scent that manages to disperse around the house and linger poetically for some time.
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 coconut or almond oil, and to which are then added a fixative which enhances the scents, such as halmaddi, vanilla, benzoin, frankincense, or 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 fragrance ingredients – which traditionally would be a masala powder of ground ingredients, though more commonly is a solvent of perfumes and/or essential oils - and increasingly the term masala is being transferred from the finely ground fragrance ingredients to the powder on the outside. 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:
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.
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 fragrance ingredients – which traditionally would be a masala powder of ground ingredients, though more commonly is a solvent of perfumes and/or essential oils - and increasingly the term masala is being transferred from the finely ground fragrance ingredients to the powder on the outside. 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
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
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.
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....)
(to be finished....)
Good stuff, Steve. It's interesting to read about the history and you've dug up some interesting facts.
ReplyDeleteLately, I've been paying attention to whether the bamboo sticks are handmade or machine made. Pretty easy to tell in most cases. This was brought to my attention by an incense maker who has to deal with costs and purity issues. Evidently, bamboo sticks are getting harder to source. Handmade will be more expensive and the machine made are often treated with an oil that will help it burn. I think most of the bamboo is from China now, but not sure about this. Most of the better makers use handmade sticks. More and more are using charcoal in their mixes for the burning. The most expensive way is to use woods, ground into powders like sawdust, old cinnamon, and resins. Watching the way incense burns is interesting. It's all part of the analysis to find out what floats our boat. Fun stuff.
This was written a while ago, and I need to look at it again to update it. I found it among my abandoned drafts yesterday and thought I'd just publish it rather than let it gather more dust in the vaults.
DeleteI researched charcoal a little while ago when reviewing the American incense Gonesh because they claim they have "the highest charcoal content of any brand currently on the market". From that research it appears that charcoal is a better fermentable for perfumed incense than wood dust because the purest charcoal has no odour of its own. And there are different qualities of charcoal - the finest are used for medicinal purposes rather than for incense. You can tell the finest charcoals by rubbing the cooled ash on the back of the hand and seeing how smooth it is. The smoother the better. The down side is that charcoal made from wood is harmful to the environment, so a number of incense makers are moving over to coconut fibre charcoal. Goloka were the first I was aware of doing that (and they would be, as they are very professional, very advanced, and very ethical). Satya are exploring it, but are not quite there yet. I think many of the smaller ("traditional"/"cottage"/"artisan") makers are fairly conservative, and are slower to move in that direction. Their USP is their traditional/conservative approach, and so they are hesitant to move in a direction which may unbalance the relationship they have with their clients.
But I haven't researched bamboo sticks. I know that the main sources are China and Vietnam, and to a lesser extent Thailand. But imports of bamboo sticks was restricted by the Indian government a few years ago in order to encourage home production. However, when I was active on my Facebook incense page, I was seeing a lot of import activity in bamboo stick and incense blanks from Vietnam and Thailand, so I am not sure how successful the restrictions have been.
But then, thinking about it, the restrictions may have come into force since I stopped using that Facebook account.....
It wasn't a restriction on bamboo sticks - it was a restriction on blanks: unfragranced joss sticks:
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