Sandalwood: its history, medicinal uses, Buddhist connections, arrival in China, and how the trade flourished in Asia
- Known for its intoxicating scent, sandalwood has been a precious commodity for over 3,000 years, fuelling ‘sandalwood rushes’ into the 20th century
I got my first whiff of sandalwood 25 years ago, in a blend of burning incense at a tiny Buddhist shrine in Lopburi, soon after landing in Thailand from Los Angeles as a lowly English teacher on July 3, 1997.
Unlike other precious commodities of their time, such as silk, pepper, tea and gunpowder, the story of sandalwood is not well documented. But after being so quickly intoxicated by the incense smoke in Lopburi – my first day in Asia – over the next quarter of a century it would become a personal endeavour to explore the origins of the sandalwood trade.
To understand its roots, uses and the reasons sandalwood became so sought after is to trace it back more than three millennia, deep on the Asian subcontinent.
During the Vedic age, from 1500BC to 600BC, highly specialised doctors carried out India’s medical traditions, mixing medicine with magic and mantras. In the ancient Ayurvedic text, the Charaka Samhita, Indian sandalwood – known as candana or chandana in Sanskrit – is listed among 129 mono-herbal drugs, with 403 proscribed healing recipes for all kinds of ailments and conditions.
In the Ayurvedic prescriptive and surgical manual the Sushruta Samhita, the Raja Vaidya (royal physician) could prescribe sensual medicine baths to the king and “rich men”. One varietal, white sandalwood, is graphically described as a way to treat daha, a “burning sensation” associated with drinking too much alcohol, which involved cooling baths with touches from “maidens’ hands”.
Indian sandalwood was also used in a heady admixture of bark, flowers, fruits, grasses, herbs, roots and leaves that formed a healing and refreshing incense meant to be inhaled daily.
