History of Incense Sticks

Incense has played an important role in many of the world's great religions. The Somali coast and the coasts of the Arabian Peninsula produced resin-bearing trees and shrubs including frankincense, myrrh, and the famous cedars of Lebanon. The cedar wood was transported all over the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, and the name Lebanon originated from a local word for incense.

The ancient Egyptians staged elaborate expeditions over upper Africa to import the resins for daily worship before the sun god Amon-Ra and for the rites that accompanied burials. The smoke from the incense was thought to lift dead souls toward heaven. The Egyptians also made cosmetics and perfumes of incense mixed with oils or unguents and blended spices and herbs.

Harbal Dhuna Dhoop

The Babylonians employed incense during prayers and rituals to try to manifest the gods; their favorites were resins from cypress, fir, and pine trees. They also relied on incense during exorcisms and for healing. They brought incense into Israel before the Babylonian Exile (586-538 B.C. ), and incense became a part of ancient Jewish worship both before the Exile and after. True frankincense and myrrh from Arabia were widely used in the temples in Jerusalem during the times of Christ's teachings, although incense has fallen out of use in modern Jewish practice.

Both the ancient Greeks and Romans used incense to drive away demons and to gratify the gods. The early Greeks practiced many rites of sacrifice and eventually began substituting the burning of incense for live sacrifices. As a result of his conquests, Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C. ) brought back many Persian plants, and the use of incense in civic ceremonies became commonplace in Greek life. Woods and resins were replaced by imported incense as the Roman Empire expanded. The Romans encountered fine myrrh in Arabia, and the conquerors carried it as incense with them across Europe.




By the fourth century A.D. , the early Christians had incorporated incense burning into their practices, particularly the Eucharist when the ascending smoke was thought to carry prayers to heaven. Both the Western Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church used incense in services and processions, but incense has always been more intensely applied in the Eastern services. The rite of swinging the censer was and is used in many religions; the censer (also called a thurible in the West and a k dan in Japan) is suspended on chains and carried by hand. The Reformation ended the presence of in-cense in Protestant church practices, although its use returned to the Church of England after the Oxford Movement in the nineteenth century.

Incense was always employed more extensively in eastern religions. The Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, and Shinto religions all burn incense in festivals, processions, and many daily rituals in which it is thought to honor ancestors. Incense burners, which are containers made of metal or pottery in which incense is burned directly or placed on hot coals, were first used in China as early as 2,000 B.C. and became an art form during China's Han dynasty (206 B.C. -220 A.D. ). These vessels had pierced lids to allow the smoke and scent to escape, and the designs from this period through the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) became increasingly omate with smoke-breathing dragons and other imaginative creations. The Chinese also applied incense to a wide variety of uses including perfuming clothes, fumigating books to destroy bookworms, and scenting inks and papers. Even the fan (an import into China from Japan) was constructed with sandal-wood forming the ribs so the motion of the fan would spread the fragrance of the wood.

In Japan, incense culture included special racks to hold kimonos so the smoke from burning incense could infiltrate the folds of these garments. Head rests were also steeped in incense fumes to indirectly perfume the hair. Clocks were made of incense sticks; different scents from the sticks told those tracking the time of the changing hours.