Flowers are beautiful, a night withered; Although the grass gas is good, there is always yellow; Although the fragrant wood is strong, the wind and rain erode. Nature bountifully gives perfumes, but niggardly limits her time. And the birth of traditional sweet, it is the capture, collection, continuation, and even supplement of these perishable aromatic things. From traditional sweet beginning, fragrant is an accidental encounter no longer, however appearance follows wait for.
History has witnessed the legend of incense wood, Shen sandalwood, and finally become the leading role of traditional incense. Those grass leaves and roots all over the world also undergo numerous tests, stand out, often come and go in the traditional incense. But the flower, in the field that belongs to it, somehow, is very silent.
Of course, "Xiang Cheng" twenty-eight volumes, and there is no lack of flowers figure, gardenia, white plum, jasmine, jasmine, jasmine, jasmine jasmine, mandala and so on in them. Following the precedent, Zhou Jia Zhou published the articles of "Southern Flowers" and "The Table of Fuming Fragrance of Flowers" to explain the use of fragrant flowers. There was also a volume of "Condensing Flowers", which was a book on the prescription of fragrant flowers. But in the actual ancient fragrant square, these familiar fragrant flowers, only scattered sporadically, and mostly in the unremarkable position, even not as common as annoying sweet pine.
Try to figure out the use of ancient fragrant flowers, may know a thing or two.
The smell of flowers does not have to come from flowers
The fragrance of flowers, diffuse in the traditional fragrance of the sky. But these wonderful scents are not all the endorsement of flowers. Single aloes blindly, the top quality can be in the fumigation between emitting a mysterious and graceful fragrance of flowers. This incense on the furnace, breath, put the Buddha can touch the sun still containing the morning dew bud.
"Conglutination is sweet" roll place carries sweet flowers square, have a unique style, showed Chinese style sweet flowers to be different from the idiocy of exotic perfume. The Chinese fragrance of flowers can not be avoided with natural fragrance, such as "sweet cloilot" recipe, early in the morning when the dew is not Xi, take the rock cinnamon flower buds, mixed with cold honey cellar. But such a direct way of incense, no less than a drop in the bucket, in the ancient incense is very rare.
Different from the foreign perfumers who extracted the fragrance molecules from the flowers and used the flowers to convey the fragrance, the ancient perfumers in China used the fragrance to express the mood of the flowers. Because of this reason, in the appearance of flowers, often make the choice of "imitating god not imitating fragrance". This has much to do with the participation of the literati in making incense. Aesthetic habits under the influence of traditional culture guide people in the pursuit of flowers, ignoring the true flavor of flowers, the original flavor, and to try to show the lasting appeal of flowers, style. Among the ancients, the most frequent and outstanding ones were all kinds of plum blossoms. Now choose two representative plum blossom fragrant formulas from "Xiangcheng" to make an explanation:
【 Princess Shouyang plum blossom fragrance 】
Cannis pine half two angelica half two peony peel half two ligusticushalf two fennel one or two Ding peel one or two, do not see fire sandalwood one or two down true fragrance two money white plum one hundred
【 Han Wei Gong thick plum fragrance 】
Black horn sink half two cloves 100 tea powder a money turmeric five cents, the wheat bran fried red musk a word to set a rice grain, namely shao powder white honey a cup
From the point of view of incense, there are plum blossom incense in the Southern Song Dynasty. Although this a little bit of white plum is perhaps only "for Fu new words strong say sorrow" affectation, but after all can find the trace of plum. As perfumers matured, perfumers began to remove the gauntlet in search of a more precise, pure aroma. Wait until the Northern Song Dynasty, although the fragrant Fang said "thick plum", plum blossom but quietly disappeared, all by other fragrant medicine on stage. It is not difficult to guess from this, the fragrance of plum blossom is not by plum blossom.
The practice that carries on according to this 2 sides, witnessed the strange place of Chinese style flower fragrance. Furnace fumigation of plum blossom fragrant pills, dense open fragrance is not the fragrance of plum blossom, and even with the snow in the plum fragrance is very different. Can be fine taste of the taste, the brain musk deer hair cold gas first, proudly isolated, just like the forest cold plum dust free from vulgarity; Then from the sweet pine, lilac came the cool, a clear air, like the snow red plum fragrance cold biting; Then by aloes, sandalwood diffuse sweet meaning, sweet and moist, just as the garden plum elegant fragrance. Although this sweet does not resemble plum blossom, get plum blossom alone however "proud, cold, elegant" lasting appeal. To finish tasting a flower in its aroma, the perfumer's intention to label it "plum blossom fragrance" must be self-evident.
Nourished by traditional culture, Chinese fragrance is implied fragrance rather than true fragrance. The ancient fragrance of flowers, such as plum blossom, sweet osmanthus, the elegance of orchids, apricot joy, all is the appearance of the temperament and character of flowers.
The fragrant flowers are not flammable
Throughout the ancient prescription, refer to the new prescription, can enter the fragrance of flowers can be counted on one's hands, and without exception are fragrant and long flowers, such as the fragrance of ten miles of golden cinnamon, gardenia fragrance and so on. Too shallow fragrance of flowers, as peach, lotus, often abandoned.
And it has a lot to do with the way the flowers smell.
Flowers do not enter the fragrance, is already a fragrance. In the poem, there is no lack of praise for the flowers. From Qu Zi's "Renqiu orchid thought to wear" to Huang Lao's "drunk in the Zanhua crown", wearing flowers into life, become a symbol of beauty. Since flowers are perishable, the perfumer roasts them and sews them tightly into sachets to smell the flowers. However, although dried flowers are easy to preserve, one fragrance is not as clear and wonderful as fresh flowers, the other fragrance dissipates quickly, always leaving a regret.
Many vanilla, fragrant wood, smell do not feel its fragrance, cast furnace burning, but unexpected fragrance. The ancients may not have such a move to fragrant flowers, only the effect is not satisfactory. Most flowers have an affinity with water and an incompatibility with fire. Scientifically speaking, the substances contained in the petals in the burning state produce an undesirable odor. It's well known that sugar meets fire to produce a scorched smell, and protein meets fire to produce a rotten egg smell. Unfortunately, the petals are rich in both, with the exception of a small amount of a pleasant floral component.
Therefore, it is not easy to find flowers in the burning incense.
There are also a few flowers, such as osmanthus, in the burning will present more aromatic factors, but this fragrance is covered by a large number of fireworks, appears dry and weak, and the burning of osmanthus is only very similar to the true osmanthus light flower aroma. On the road of burning incense, what the perfumer can do is to reduce the pyrotechnics of the fragrance itself as far as possible by means of mixing incense, and make the fragrance close to the natural state as far as possible through the ratio of fragrance ingredients.
This is a task that the ancients never accomplished, and it is also a direction that people can strive for today. Predictably, this is not going to happen overnight. In the popular floral series of burning incense, those close to the true flower aroma, aroma, is often a chemical flavor harmonization.
The method of fumigation shows the real body
Flowers still have a place in incense burning, but this is clearly not the mainstream. The use of flowers, incense, more is to take its fragrant juice, that is, the "flower incense formula" as stated in "Xiang Cheng". The method of flower smoke is the crystallization of the collision between Chinese civilization and Islamic civilization. And opened this prelude, is the late Tang Dynasty, the Five Dynasties period, big food rose water crossing east.
The rose water, contained in glass vats, amazed an age and opened a new charter for Chinese incense. At first, the rose water soaked aloes wood, so that the fragrance molecules evenly into the aloes wood, so that the aloes wood infected with the fragrance of the flowers, making the aroma more elegant. Rose water rare, let the ancients consider local fragrant flower fumigation juice, instead of imported. The way of fumigation is the ancient annotation of the origin of rose water, although this is a beautiful misunderstanding.
The difficulty of extracting the flower juice gave the perfumer a masterstroke. Pull out the "juice" state, spread the flowers layer by layer on the fragrant wood with light aroma, hide in the sealed porcelain box, through repeated long-term fumigation, let the fragrance of flowers into the fragrant wood. The resulting fragrance of flowers is very light, at first glance it is laborious but not productive work. However, the fragrance of flowers obtained in this way coincides with the aesthetic tendency of the delicate and delicate fragrance.
Among all the fragrance, except musk, borneol and so on, flowers are the first fragrance molecules to dissipate. Today, people have the use of this feature, will be used as dried petals fragrant clothes, wrapped in fragrant pills. The pellet is placed on a silver leaf and fumigated, filling the air with the fragrance of the flowers. But the way of sweet clothes has interest, even the strange sweet that is unexpected unexpectedly, do not have extensive sex however. First, the fragrance of flowers is light and slightly floating, and the charm is relatively single, which is not applicable to all fragrant pills. Secondly, the fragrance of flowers on the stove temperature has a certain limit, the temperature is too high almost burning, inevitably there will be not beautiful.
