Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/740

720 720 INCENSE and every evening when they were lighted or &quot; set up &quot; (Ex. xxx. 7, 8). A handful of it was also burnt once a year in the holy of holies by the high priest on a pan of burning coals taken from the altar of burnt-offering (Lev. xvi. 12, 13). Pure frankincense (lebonah) formed part of the meat offering (Lev. ii. 16, vi. 15), and was also presented along with the shew bread (Lev. xxiv. 7) every Sabbath day (probably on two golden saucers ; see Jos., Ant., iii. 10, 7). The religious significance of the use of incense, or at least of its use in the holy of holies, is distinctly set forth in Lev. xvi. 12, 13. The Jews were also in the habit of using odoriferous substances in connexion with the funeral obsequies of distinguished persons (see 2 Chron. xvi. 14, xxi. 19; Jer. xxxiv. 5). In Am. vi. 10 &quot;he that burneth him &quot;probably means &quot; he that burns perfumes in his honour.&quot; References to the domestic use of incense occur in Cant. iii. 6, Prov. xxvii. 9, cf. vii. 17. The &quot;marbles&quot; of Nineveh furnish frequent examples of the offering of incense to the sun-god and his consort (2 Kings xxiii. 5). The kings of Assyria united in them selves the royal and priestly offices, and on the monuments they erected they are generally represented as offering incense and pouring out wine to the tree of life. They probably carried the incense in the sacred bag which is so frequently seen in their hands and in those also of the common priests. According to Herodotus (i. 183), frank incense to the amount of 1000 talents weight was offered every year, during the feast of Bel, on the great altar at his temple in Babylon. The monuments of Persepolis and the coins of the Sas- sanians show that the religious use of incense was as com mon in ancient Persia as in Babylonia and Assyria. Five times a day the priests of the Persians (Zoroastrians) burnt incense on their sacred fire altars. In the Avesta ( Vendidad, Fargard xix. 24, 40), the incense they used is named voku gaono. It has been identified with benzoin, but was probably frankincense. Herodotus (iii. 97) states that the Arabs brought every year to Darius as tribute 1000 talents of frankincense. The Parsees still preserve in western India the pure tradition of the ritual of incense as followed by their race from probably the most ancient times. The Ramayana and Mahabharata afford evidence of the employment of incense by the Hindus, in the worship of the gods and the burning of the dead, from the remotest antiquity. Its use was obviously continued by the Buddhists during the prevalence of their religion iu India, for it is still used by them in Nepal, Tibet, Ceylon, Burmah, China, and Japan. These countries all received Buddhism from India, and a large propor tion of the porcelain and earthenware articles imported from China and Japan into Europa consists of in numerable forms of censers. The Jains all over India burn sticks of incense before their Jina. The commonest incense in ancient India was probably frankincense. The Indian frankincense tree, Boswdlia thurifera, Colebrooke (which certainly includes B. ylabra, Roxburgh), is a doubtful native of India. It is found chiefly where the Buddhist re ligion prevailed in ancient times, in Bihar and along the foot of the Himalayas and in western India, where it particularly flourishes in the neighbourhood of the caves of Ajanta. It is quite possible therefore that, in the course of their widely extended commerce during the one thousand years of their ascendency, the Buddhists imported the true frankincense trees from Africaand Arabia into India, and that the accepted Indian species are merely varieties of them. Now, however, the incense in commonest use in India is benzoin. But the consumption of all manner of odoriferous resins, gum resins, roots, woods, dried leaves, flowers, fruits, and seeds in India, in social as well as religious observances, is enormous. The grateful perfumed powder abir or randa is composed either of rice, flour, mango bark or deodar wood, camphor, and aniseed, or of sandalwood or wood aloes, zerumbet, zedoary, rose flowers, camphor, and civet. The incense sticks and pastils known all over India under the names of ud-buti (&quot;benzoin-light&quot;) or agyar-ki-buti (&quot;wood aloes light &quot;) are composed of benzoin, wood aloes, sandal- wood, rock lichen, patchouli, rose-ma] loes, Flacourtia leaf (talisput-tree), mastic, and sugar candy or gum. The abir and aggir butis made at the Mahometan city of Bijarpur in the Mahratta country are celebrated all over western India. The Indian Mussulmans indeed were rapidly degenerating into a mere sect of Hindus before the Wahabi revival, and the more recent political propaganda in support of the false caliphate of the sultans of Turkey ; and we therefore find the religious use of incense among them more general than among the Mahometans of any other country. They use it at the ceremonies of circumcision, bismiRah (teaching the child &quot; the name of God &quot;), virginity, and marriage. At marriage they burn benzoin wita nim seeds to keep off evil spirits, and prepare the bride cakes by putting a quantity of benzoin between layers of wheaten dough, closed all round, and frying them in clarified butter. For days the bride is fed on little else. In their funeral ceremonies, the moment the spirit has fled incense is burnt before the corpse until it is carried out to be buried. The bogging fakirs also go about with a lighted stick of incense in one hand, and holding out with the other an incense-holder (literally, &quot;incense chariot&quot;), into which the coins of the pious are thrown. Large &quot;incense trees&quot; resembling our Christ mas trees, formed of incense-sticks and pastils and ossclets, and alight all over, are borne by the Shiah Mussulmans in the annual procession of the Mohurrum, in commemoration of the martyrdom of the sons of Ali. The worship of the tulsi plant, or holy basil, by the Hindus is popularly explained by its consecration to Vishnu and Krishna. It grows on the four-horned altar before the house, or in a pot placed in one of the front windows, and is worshipped every morning by all the female members of every Hindu household. It is possible that its adora tion has survived from the times when the Hindus buried their dead in their houses, beneath the family hearth. When they came into a hot climate the fire of the sacrifices and domestic cookery was removed out of the house ; but the dead were probably still for a while buried in or near it, and the tulsi was planted over their graves, at once for the salubrious fragrance it diffuses and to represent the burning of incense on the altar of the family lar. As to the Ovf.a mentioned in Homer (II. ix. 499, and elsewhere) and in Hesiod (Works and Days, 338), there is some uncertainty whether they were incense offerings at all, and if so, whether they were ever offered alone, arid not always in conjunction with animal sacrifices. That the domestic use, however, of the fragrant wood 6vcv (the Arbor vitce or Callitris quadrivalvis of botanists, which yields the resin sandarach) was known in the Homeric age, is shown by the case of Calypso (Od. v. CO), and the very similarity of the word Ovov to (9uos may be taken as almost conclusively proving that by that time the same wood was also employed for religious purposes. It is not probable that the sweet smelling gums and resins of the countries of the Indian Ocean began to be introduced into Greece before the 8th or 7th century B.C., and doubtless Xt /3avos or AtySai/coTos first became an article of extensive commerce only after the Mediterranean trade with the East had been opened up by the Egyptian king Psammetichus (G70 B.C.). The new Oriental word is frequently employed by Herodotus: and there are abundant references to the use of the thing among the writers of the golden age of Attic literature (see,