Sandalwood Ritual Indian Mysore Sandalwood Incense Sticks | Gold Standard - 1.06 oz

In the old Cantonese merchants' code, Lao Shan — "Old Mountain" — was not a mountain at all, but a medal: place of origin, orthodoxy, the undisputed benchmark. That medal belonged to Mysore, India.

In Sanskrit, sandalwood is chandana — "the glowing wood." Three thousand years ago, it entered the Ayurvedic text Charaka Samhita, cited more than 160 times. In 1792, Tipu Sultan of Mysore declared the sandalwood tree a "Royal Tree" and monopolized all trade. In 1916, Maharaja Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV had an epiphany — why not distill oil? Scientists at the Indian Institute of Science soon produced the first bottle of Mysore sandalwood oil, and "Mysore Sandalwood" became the gold standard of the global perfume and incense world. For incense masters of China and Japan, Lao Shan is not a grade — it is a ruler. All sandalwood is measured against it.

The Western Ghats once held so much sandalwood that the land earned a name: Chandanada Nadu — "Land of Sandalwood." But trees too valuable attract thieves. India's most notorious sandalwood smuggler, Veerappan, built a criminal empire in the Mysore jungles — handing out charity like Robin Hood, killing like a warlord. It took the Indian government twenty years to hunt him down. Today, in Karnataka, every sandalwood tree — even one growing in your own yard — belongs to the government. Cutting one without a permit is a crime.