In the real court life in ancient times, incense was indeed a common item and an important symbol of status. As early as thousands of years ago, incense has entered the field of vision of Chinese ancestors.
What has happened in the past few thousand years? This thing, which seems to be not a necessity of life, has been transformed from a natural product outside of human society into something that people cannot live without. Why is incense so widely and universally embedded in all corners of people's lives, and how can incense culture be nurtured in the land of China?
It all started more than 5,000 years ago......
It starts with the first incense burner more than 5,000 years ago
In the late Hongshan cultural site of Niuheliang in western Liaoning, a zigzag gray pottery smoker cover has been unearthed. The Hongshan culture dates back to 5500-5000 years ago, that is to say, the ancestors of the Neolithic Age have begun to use incense.
According to several pieces of smokers unearthed at the end of the Neolithic Age, they are scattered in the Liaohe River Basin, the Yellow River Basin and the Yangtze River Basin, and their style is also consistent with the smokers used in later generations, and the shape is beautiful, which can be called a "luxury" at that time. The splendor of Chinese civilization can be seen here.
Judging from the current archaeological discoveries, the "burnt sacrifice" (that is, the sacrificial method of burning firewood and burning sacrifices) has appeared in the sacrificial activities of the mainland more than 6,000 years ago, and the plant species used in it still need to be investigated, but it is very likely that some plants with better quality and aromatic smell were selected.
Since then, the use of incense throughout the pre-Qin period has been biased towards sacrificial incense. In the Shang Dynasty, there was a very fragrant and expensive liquor called "鬯", which was made of tulip, black millet and so on. Tulip is an aromatic herb belonging to the ginger family, also known as "tulip", and black millet was a precious grain at that time. It is generally used for sacrifices, and sometimes as a gift or to entertain dignitaries.
Due to the high frequency of the use of the fang, the Western Zhou also set up a special position for this purpose, and the main business of these people who went to work every day was to be responsible for various matters related to the fang. The title of them is also very straightforward, they are called "Hu Ren" or "Yu Ren", as recorded in "Zhou Li Chun Guan": "Yu Ren holds a bare weapon." All the sacrifices, the guests' scarry, and the depression is presented with real Yi. ”
The Spring and Autumn Period followed the tradition of sacrificial incense in the previous generations, exuding elegance and cheerfulness everywhere, and the connection between incense and people gradually gave birth to a unique cultural context.
Burning "Xiao" was the trend of sacrificial activities during that period, and "Xiao" refers to Artemisia with a distinct aroma. Artemisia is often co-branded with beauty, as stated in "The Book of Poetry: Tatewo Xiao": "Tatebites, zero dew." Seeing a gentleman, for the dragon is the light. Its virtue is not happy, and the longevity test will not be forgotten. "Here Artemisia is used to compare gentlemen.
Like "Xiao", orchid and cypress are also highly regarded and will exude a fragrant taste, such as the two beautiful sentences in "Nine Songs": "Yulan soup is fragrant, and gorgeous clothes are like Ying." ”
Every spring in March, people gather on the waterfront, laughing and laughing, holding the bluegrass in their hands, leaning over gently, and there is still a little cold water vapor in the warm breeze on their faces, stained with flowing water, hoping to get rid of the dirt and filth of the whole cold winter by the purity of nature.
This event is called "Purification", which is held in spring and autumn, and this time in spring is called "Spring Healing", which is held on the first day of March. The spring festival is not only a ritual to remove defilement, but also a pleasant festival for feasting, mingling and traveling by the waterside, where young men and women talk and laugh in the sound of gurgling water, and literati and scholars taste wine and chant in the poetry of orchid. That's right, Wang Xizhi's "Lanting Collection Preface" also writes about this custom.
Aroma nourishing
During the Warring States period, incense, which is different from sacrificial incense, became popular among the upper classes, and people also liked to wear incense sachets with them. After using incense for a long time, the health value of incense will gradually be discovered. Although there were not too many incense medicines introduced from the border areas and overseas at that time, relying on the wetter and warmer climate than now, the variety of incense medicines can also be said to be abundant, including orchid, Hui, mugwort, Xiao, pepper, Zhizhi, magnolia and so on.
In practice, people at that time had gradually formed the concept of "aroma nourishment".
People believe that we must start with two aspects: "sex" and "life." As far as "sex" is concerned, people's love and pursuit of fragrance is a natural nature, and as far as "life" is concerned, fragrance has a health preservation effect, and if it is used in a proper way, it is beneficial to physical and mental health.
As "Xunzi Zheng Treatise" said: "Take the main road, tend to cross the seat to nourish the peace, carry the testicol on the side to nourish the nose, and there is a wrong balance in front of it to nourish the eyes." "The ancient emperor is more important than Anyang, and even the car that travels must be decorated with vanilla.
Under the two-in-one functional attribute of "nourishing" and decorating incense, gentlemen and scholars like to use incense to cultivate sentiment, self-cultivation and clarity, and cultivate their inner will through external admiration. As Qu Yuan's "Lisao" said: "I have both this inner beauty and the importance of cultivation." Hu Jiangli and Bi Zhixi, Su Qiulan thought it was admired. ”
The concept of "aroma nourishment" explores the important value of incense in daily life, not only forming a systematic culture of incense medicine and health preservation, but also deriving a rich cultural context. It can be said that the concept of "aroma nourishment" has a very far-reaching impact on the development of incense culture in later generations, and has also become the core concept of Chinese incense culture.
Later, the use of incense in daily life became more and more common, and the concept of "aroma nourishing nature" was deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and the popular use of incense by the royal family and aristocratic class, and the importance of incense by doctors and literati were deeply influenced by this concept.
Two Han people use incense: "mouth spit fragrant"
In the history of the development of incense culture, there are two eye-catching peaks, one is the two Han Dynasty and the other is the Song Dynasty.
At the beginning of the Han Dynasty, incense had become popular among the royal family. By the time of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, incense was widely popular, not only used to smoke rooms, clothes, quilts, but also used for banquets, singing and dancing and other entertainment activities. A prominent sign of the prevalence of incense in the Han Dynasty was the use of incense into the court ritual system.
One of them can be summed up in four words, which is "the mouth spits fragrant." According to the record of "Han Guanyi", if Shang Shulang wants to perform to the emperor, there is a "maid Shi holding an incense burner to smoke" before facing the saint, and when answering the story, he must "contain chicken tongue incense". "Chicken tongue incense" is a kind of incense that can be taken in the mouth, and it is actually a near-ripe fruit of medicinal cloves, which is oval or oval when dried.
Regarding chicken tongue incense, there is also an oolong incident. Due to Diao Cun's "old and bad breath" in the servant at the time, Emperor Huan of Han gave him a piece of chicken tongue incense and ordered him to put it in his mouth. Diao Cun had never seen this incense, so he gently put it in his mouth and tried it, and felt that there was a tingling sensation in his tongue, and immediately felt that something was wrong—the emperor must have felt that I had done something wrong, and wanted to give me this poisonous incense to death, and the king wanted the minister to die, and the minister had to die! So, Diao Cun returned home with a heavy heart and said goodbye to his family one by one. To his surprise, his colleague looked at the incense and pointed out that the emperor had only given him a fresh smell of chicken tongue. Diao Cun's mood seemed to be on a roller coaster, and in the end, "salty and sneering, even more devouring, his intention was understood".
Thanks to the unprecedented vast territory of the Han Dynasty and the opening of the Silk Road, more and more kinds of incense medicines were introduced to the Central Plains from the border areas (present-day Hainan Island, northern Vietnam, Yunnan, Liangguang, Sichuan, etc.) and outside the territory (the Western Regions and Nanyang at that time), including agarwood, green wood, rosemary, Suhexiang, etc.
According to the current research, the use of incense in the Han Dynasty and the Han Dynasty was obviously less sacrificial, and the most of them were incense for daily life. On the basis of a rich variety of spices, people have studied and used incense more deeply, which can be seen from the variety of incense utensils.
What if you want to smoke the quilt flexibly? It is clearly recorded in the "Xijing Miscellaneous Records": use the "incense burner in the quilt". This is a kind of spherical smoker that can be freely rolled by the ingenious structure, also known as "incense ball", mostly made of silver, copper and other metals, the ball wall is hollowed, and there are three layers of balls in the ball in turn, each small ball is hung on a rotating shaft, and the innermost layer is hung with a small bowl of incense. When the incense ball rotates or rolls, under the gravity of the bowl, the three-layer hinge rotates accordingly, and the bowl remains level at all times, and the incense does not pour out.
What if you want to smoke multiple incense at the same time? The tomb of the king of Nanyue has unearthed four conjoined smokers, which are cast by four small square furnaces that are not connected to each other, and can burn up to four spices at the same time without interfering with each other. This way of using incense is also called "incense". The "five incense" mentioned in the "Yellow Emperor Jiuding Shendan Sutra" of the Eastern Han Dynasty is an early exploration of Hexiang, which are Qingmu incense, Angelica angelica, peach skin, cypress leaf and tonka incense.
The popular use of incense by the royal class of the two Han Dynasty had a great role in promoting the popularization and development of incense, and also opened up the atmosphere of using incense in the life of the upper class, which continued until the Ming and Qing dynasties.
The glitzy past of incense
Before entering the introduction of incense in the Song Dynasty, another peak in the development of incense culture, let's take a look at the exaggerated past of incense.
Since incense is popular in the upper echelons of society all year round, it must shoulder the responsibility of highlighting identity and status, and the famous incense can be compared with gold and jade, but its use of sustenance and temperament is far from being comparable to gold and jade. Therefore, the value of the famous fragrance can be imagined.
During the Six Dynasties, the incense of the court nobles was still flourishing in the Han Dynasty. When Cao Cao, a generation of heroes, was dying, he could not rest assured that his wives and concubines would be left behind, so he left a testament: "After I die, I will hold the big clothes as if I were alive...... The remaining incense can be divided into ladies, and it is not sacrificed. There is nothing to do in the house, and it is also necessary to learn to sell the group. Cao Cao thought that the remaining incense should not be taken to the sacrifice, but could be distributed to the ladies, and if there was nothing to do, he could also learn how to make belts and shoes to support his family. It can be seen that the famous incense at that time still had a certain value.
This is the famous "incense selling shoes". Su Shi commented: "Treacherous and hypocritical in life, true in death." The world judges characters by success or failure, so they are among the heroes. ”
In addition to seeing the prosperity of using incense from the side, there are also cases of directly using incense to "show off wealth".
There was a very rich man named Shi Chong in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and his way of showing off his wealth was to smoke incense in the toilet. This is not surprising, but what makes Shi Chong's family different is that Shi Chong directly turned the toilet into a changing room. His family's toilet "often has more than ten maids, all of whom have complexions, put nail decoction powder, agarwood juice, and those who go to the toilet, all of whom are easy to come out with new clothes." Keduo is ashamed to strip". One day, Shang Shulang Liu Sai visited Shi Chong, and when he went to the toilet, he saw "a red tent, a very beautiful mattress, and two maids holding sachets", thinking that he had broken into someone's bedroom, and apologized again and again. But it's really just a toilet.
Shi Chong's family also often feasted and drank and had fun, and he ordered dozens of maids to wear jade pendants and golden hairpins, with incense in their mouths, and dance day and night. Sometimes, all the expensive agarwood powder is sprinkled on the bed and the girls are allowed to go up and walk, and "those who are too light to leave no footprints" are rewarded. It's extravagant!
In the Sui and Tang dynasties, officials used incense even more luxury. It is said that Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty also engaged in a large-scale visual and olfactory double-spell art landscape - an artificial volcano. According to the "Taiping Guangji", Emperor Sui often on Chinese New Year's Eve, in the courtyard in front of the palace, "set up dozens of volcanoes, all the roots of agarwood, each mountain burned agarwood several cars, the fire was dark, then the armor was fried", the flame was several feet high, the aroma was heard far away, "in one night, more than 200 times of agarwood, 200 stones of armor fried".
In the Tang Dynasty, there were also smokers made in the shape of animals, such as duck-shaped ones called "fragrant ducks" and "golden ducks". Not only utensils, but also incense in the shape of animals were made directly from incense powder and charcoal powder, and the unusual shape attracted attention.
Song Dynasty incense: elegant but not carved
The extravagant and exaggerated use of incense has not continued to leave an upward trend in the waves of history. In the Song Dynasty, incense culture ushered in a good time full of poetry.
With the development of shipbuilding and navigation technology, the maritime trade of the Song Dynasty ushered in a prosperous period, and incense became one of the important imported goods. At that time, there was also a type of ship called "incense boat", which was specially used to transport incense medicine. In 1974, a large shipwreck of the Song Dynasty excavated in Quanzhou, Fujian Province was a fragrant boat, which carried a variety of incense medicines, such as ambergris, incense, sandalwood, agarwood, frankincense, etc. According to historical records, in the tenth year of Xining in the Northern Song Dynasty (1077), more than 200,000 kilograms of frankincense were purchased in Guangzhou alone. It can be seen that at that time, people's love for incense and their enthusiasm for incense culture reached what extent.
In line with this, there is also a "incense medicine storehouse" in the palace, which is mainly in charge of "cashiering foreign contributions and the affairs of incense medicines and gems in the market". The official in charge of the incense medicine library is the "incense medicine library envoy", and the rank is Zheng Sipin. In addition to this, there were also supervisors and officials who escorted incense.
An important sign that the incense culture of the Song Dynasty entered its heyday was the popularization of incense in the market life. If you zoom in on the "Qingming Riverside Map", you can intuitively find the ubiquitous incense in the market.
At that time, there were all kinds of incense shops in the market, and there were "incense women" who offered incense to customers at any time in the restaurants, and there were various foods made from incense medicine on the roadside, such as fragrant crispy plums, fragrant medicinal sugar water (also known as "bathing Buddha water"), fragrant candy seeds, fragrant papaya, etc. Every traditional festival, fragrant medicine and food must be the key to ensure the sense of festival ritual. For example, during the Dragon Boat Festival, from the beginning of the fifth month of the lunar calendar to the day before the Dragon Boat Festival, peach branches, willow branches, sunflowers, pu leaves and Fu Dao Ai are sold on the streets. Food needs to be prepared in advance, such as fragrant candy seeds, rice dumplings, five-color water balls, etc. In addition, the Dragon Boat Festival also has the custom of burning incense and bathing orchids.
Not only do they sell incense in the market, but they also have a popular thing called "incense car", and probably sometimes even the air and streets are fragrant. Lu You wrote in "Notes on Lao Xue'an": "When the Beijing master inherits the peace, the clan Qi Li is forbidden when he is old, and the women get on the calf cart, and they all use two small mustaches to hold the incense balls beside them, and they hold two small incense balls in their sleeves. ”
On the night of the Lantern Festival, the market is more fragrant. Accompanied by lanterns, the women wore incense powders of various fragrances, hung their own embroidered sachets, wore delicate incense beads, and wore smoked incense clothes, shuttling through the busy streets, telling a joke with their companions, and laughing. From time to time, a "incense car" passed by them, accompanied by dazzling fireworks overhead. "BMW carved cars are full of fragrance" and "laughter is full of dark fragrance" is a vivid description of the urban scene of the Song Dynasty.
The reason why the incense culture flourished in the Song Dynasty was because people at that time paid attention to the quality of incense, and paid great attention to the heart and artistic conception in making and using incense. Judging from the style of incense vessels alone, the incense vessels of the Song Dynasty tended to be simple, light, and unique. Although incense is still loved by the world, but no one deliberately pursues and compares the strange, precious and expensive incense, and the incense culture of the Song Dynasty is prosperous but not flashy, exquisite but not carved.
The neighborhood is lively, and the literati are elegant. Judging from the name of incense, the poetry has spread - Yihe incense, Jingshen incense, Xiaozong incense, Sihe incense, Tibetan spring incense, Xiaolan incense, Shengmei incense...... The recipe is elegant, and the name is elegant. In the Song Dynasty, there were also many incense named after people, which may be the incense recipe from this person, or it may be that this person likes to use a certain kind of incense, such as Li Yuanlao Xiaolan incense, Jiangnan Li main account incense, etc.
Among the literati, there is also a creative and connotative incense - Yin Xiang.
Seal incense is literal, that is, incense like a seal, also known as "seal incense". The general production method is as follows: first take out the incense ash in the furnace, compact, and then put the "Lianbi" pattern or seal character mold (i.e., "incense seal") carved into wood on the incense ash, and then spread the carefully blended incense powder into the mold, press it, and finally scrape off the excess incense powder, carefully remove the mold, and the incense printing is done.
Lighting incense from one end, you can watch the words or patterns being burned off little by little, the shape is beautiful and diverse, full of interest, and the literati like to play like this. At the same time, the incense can also be used to keep time, and Guo Shoujing in the Yuan Dynasty also used the incense to make "cabinet incense leakage" and "screen incense leakage" and other timing tools.
Since the incense of the Song Dynasty has become ubiquitous, the important process at that time - ink making naturally cannot be absent. In the Song Dynasty, people often use musk, cloves, borneol and other incense medicines into ink, such as "ink fairy" Pan Gu once made "pine pills" and "sinister" and other ink, known as "undefeated when wet", "fragrant through the muscles and bones, grinding to the end and fragrant", after writing the paper and the study are fragrant.
Not only the book and ink are fragrant, but the tea at hand on the desk is also fragrant. "Fragrant tea" is another famous and high-quality food with great influence in the Song Dynasty, which is fragrant and has the function of rational qi and health preservation. The Song people did not drink tea simply by brewing tea, but by group tea. First, the tea leaves are steamed, pounded, baked, and then made into larger tea cakes, which are called "group tea". When making group tea, incense can be added, the common ones are borneol, musk, agarwood, sandalwood, etc., and sometimes lotus heart, pine nuts, almonds, plum blossoms, jasmine, wood, etc.
When drinking, the tea cake is crushed, crushed into fine powder, and brewed with boiling water, which is called "ordering tea". A breath of tea fragrance into the nose, as if encountering the most beautiful spring, summer, autumn and winter in the mountains, flowers bloom and simple and clear. In "Qingping Le", "the dragon and phoenix group of Beiyuan Jin" is the famous fragrant tea of the Northern Song Dynasty, which is generally made into a round tea cake by adding a small amount of musk and borneol, and there are dragon and phoenix patterns printed on the mold.
Ouyang Xiu once said: "The quality of tea is more expensive than the dragon and phoenix, and it is called the tea group...... Began to make a small piece of dragon tea to enter, its quality is exquisite, called a small group, where twenty cakes weigh a catty, its price is two taels of gold. However, gold can be available, but tea is not available. This "small dragon group" is less than one or two, which is made by the calligrapher Cai Xiang to improve the tea-making process, made of fresh and tender tea buds, and only produces ten catties per year.
The fragrance is full of red mansions, covering the aftertaste
The incense culture that came from the Song and Yuan dynasties was fully spread and developed steadily in the Ming and Qing dynasties. With the progress of incense forming technology, incense sticks, stick incense sticks, tower incense and other different shapes of incense are widely used, and the matching incense cages, incense inserts, horizontal stoves, hand stoves, etc. are also developed, and incense is widely seen in operas and novels.
The first 80 chapters of the novel "Dream of Red Mansions" are very detailed in the description of incense products, incense utensils, and incense scenes, which is a very representative content in the history of incense culture.
When the concubine was provincial, the incense burned in the Grand View Garden was "the fragrance of lilies", which was made by the flowers of the herbs. Tracing back to the past, there was a legend of "Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty burning the incense of a hundred harmony" to welcome the Queen Mother of the West, and there were also records of "Hundred Herbs of Youth" as sacrificial wine in the earlier Han Dynasty classics. Du Fu Zeng Shiyun: "The flowers are as fragrant as a hundred and fragrant." ”
In addition, there are also cold incense pills taken by Baochai, "plum blossom fragrant cakes" burned by attacking people's hand stoves, "incense seals" written in Miaoyu's Mid-Autumn Festival couplet, "new jade-colored yarn pillows filled with various roses and peony petals" that Baoyu and Fang Guan lean on when they were fighting, and borneol (dipterocarp) and musk sent by Jia Yun to seek a florist's errand to supervise the work...... It can be described as "ethereal incense", and Chinese incense culture is all in it.
Since the late Qing Dynasty, incense, which was born as a "luxury", is difficult to stop in the troubled times. The times are turbulent, and those who love and taste incense in the past are difficult to regain, and the trade of incense medicine and the production of incense products can only survive hard.
The copper kettle is carved out, and the tradition enters the next journey with the oncoming modern industry and ideology, and the wisp of fragrance that was once left on the desk of the study seems to be gradually drifting away.
However, even though the stars have changed, the incense culture has always retained its true beauty and enduring preciousness.
(Excerpted from "The Ancients Live Like This", Sichuan People's Publishing House/Publishing)