What are the Four Great Incenses of China?

The four great incense refers to incense, sandalwood, musk and ambergris.

1, incense

Distributed in Guangdong, Hainan, South, Guangxi, Fujian and other places. Taste pungent, bitter, slightly warm. Trees, 5-15 m tall, bark dark gray, a few smooth, fibers tough; branchlets terete, crepe, sparsely pilose when young, gradually glabrescent, glabrous or subglabrous.

2, sandalwood

Sandalwood for the Sandalwoodaceae sandalwood plant heartwood, evergreen small trees, 6 to 9 meters high, with parasitic roots. Distributed in India, Malaysia, Australia and Indonesia and other places, China Taiwan is also cultivated, year-round harvest.

3, musk

This product for the deer family animal musk male animal scent gland capsule secretion. Live musk to take incense: choose more than 3 years of age of strong male musk, tied to the musk platform, abdomen up.

The musk extractor fixes the musk capsule (scent gland capsule) with the left hand and separates the mouth of the capsule, the right hand holds a sterilized scent extractor spoon and inserts it slowly, the depth depends on the size of the musk capsule and prevents damage to the capsule, and then inserts it and gently rotates the spoon to extract the scent and pulls the musk outward, and then extracts it from the plate.

4, Lobelia

Crystals obtained from the resin and volatile oil of Lobelia, is nearly pure dextro-lobelia, Lobelia resin and volatile oil contains a variety of terpene components.

Chinese incense culture

One, the Neolithic period of the germination

Human love of incense is the innate nature of the needs of the original ancestors of the plant spice extraction.

Two, the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period of the initial period

Spring and Autumn and Warring States period began, incense began to have written records, the development of incense culture at this time the first signs.

Three, the Qin and Han period of the molding period

Incense culture has made great strides. "The Silk Road" brought us overseas cloves, benzoin, frankincense, ambergris. In the Han Dynasty, incense and incense appeared for the first time, and the court practitioners began to use a variety of incense to mix incense according to the theory of yin and yang, five elements and meridians.

Four, Sui and Tang period of maturity

Sui-Tang period of economic prosperity, convenient sea transportation, Buddhism flourished, from royalty to commoners, with incense is quite common, rich in a variety of forms of incense all law.

Fifth, the heyday of the Northern Song Dynasty

This period, not only Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism advocate the use of incense, and incense has become a part of the daily life of ordinary people.

Sixth, the Ming and Qing Dynasties of the stabilization period of the Ming Dynasty, in the inheritance and development of the Song Dynasty incense incense incense culture at the same time and the combination of science, Buddhism into a "sitting incense" and "class incense", thus becoming a jungle meditation and investigation of the learning of a subject.

Seven, the chaos of the war of the shrinking period

With the end of the Qing Dynasty, the decline of the country, the beginning of the war, the literati and the spiritual life of the literati tend to be crude and dull, incense and poetry, music and dance and other pure art forms, the same, gradually declining. The next warlords, the War of Resistance against Japan, and later the War of Liberation and the invasion of Western industrial civilization makes people question the traditional culture, from then on, including the "incense", including the traditional culture and art of a decline.