Chandana: Paste, Pyre, and Temple

In Hinduism sandalwood paste (chandana), ground from the wood with water, is applied to images of deities and to the foreheads of worshippers as a cooling, purifying and auspicious mark, and it scents temples and shrines. It is burned in the cremation fire, so that its fragrance attends both worship and death, and it is used in the making of malas and carved icons. Buddhism and Jainism share the reverence, and sandalwood is among the incenses of Chinese and Japanese temple practice. The wood's prestige rests on the plain fact of its fragrance and its durability; the specific ritual meanings, purity, devotion, the honouring of the divine and the dead, are read onto a scent that genuinely lingers where others fade.

Mysore sandalwood, from the historic Indian region now in Karnataka, became internationally the most prized source of the essential oil, so renowned that Mysore sandalwood oil later received Geographical Indication protection in India, a modern legal recognition of a reputation built up over centuries of temple and perfumery use, much as Kazanlak rose oil or Champagne carry protected regional names in Europe. Wild Mysore sandalwood has become increasingly scarce and tightly regulated by Indian state forestry law given the tree's slow growth and high value, so that today much of the incense-grade wood on the world market comes instead from plantation-grown Australian trees, a supply shift within living memory of anyone who has bought sandalwood incense across several decades.