James McHugh

Blattes de Byzance in India: Mollusk Opercula and the History of Perfumery

Aromatics derived from animals have played a very important role in the history of perfumery. The most well-known of these materials are musk from the preputial glands of the musk deer, ambergris produced in the stomach of the sperm whale, and civet from the anal glands of the civet cat. Two other notable materials are castoreum from the beaver, and hyraceum from the solidified urine of the African hyrax. The material that I will call ‘sweet hoof’ in this article, also called blattes de Byzance and unguis odoratus , is another fragrant material derived from an animal, consisting of the opercula of certain marine snails. With its marine origins ‘sweet hoof’ is intrinsically linked to the ocean and to trade, and it has also long been of importance all the way from the Mediterranean to China and Japan. Indeed, it is probably the most ancient animal derived aromatic to have an extensive global use, being mentioned in ancient Babylonian incense recipes. Yet, quite probably owing to its very low profile in more commonly studied genres of Sanskrit texts, the South Asian chapter of the history of ‘sweet hoof’ has yet to be written.

The Classification of Smells and the Order of the Senses in Indian Religious Traditions

In the course of producing complex analyses of sensory experience, traditional Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist scholars in South Asia examined the nature of smell. These scholars were most often interested in the fundamental qualities of smells, i.e. how many types of odor there are. Faced with this difficult task, the three sectarian groups initially produced three different accounts, though in later works most scholars adopted very similar classifications of smell. In part, this may be because of the difficulties involved in classifying smells, but the article also suggests that it was mutually beneficial to abandon contentious material in less significant parts of a system in order to focus discussion on more central issues. Amongst all the sense-objects, odors were most consistently defined by terms implying an aesthetic value. The article also examines the place of the sense of smell within the three different orders of the senses that these three schools of thought used. These sense-orders reflect divergent classificatory principles, and the place of smell in relation to the other senses highlights different aspects of the sense of smell. Unlike their stance on the classification of odors, the three schools of thought always maintained distinct orders of the senses, which must have been a regular reminder of difference in philosophical priorities.

From precious to polluting: tracing the history of camphor in hinduism

ABSTRACT Recently some Hindu temples stopped using camphor lamps because of the soot and pollution they produce. In this article I explore this contemporary problem, tracing how a network of plants, geography, physico-chemical qualities, traders, perfumers, celluloid factories, and ancient scriptures came together to construct camphor, first as a precious perfume, and later as a polluting chemical. In the medieval period, rare camphor was imported from Southeast Asia and camphor lamps would have been extremely luxurious. In religious texts that discuss lamp fuels we see the prestige of exotic, costly camphor as a material associated with the wealthy and powerful. At this time camphor was only available to the cosmopolitan elite, including gods in temples, for whom it was a necessary, luxurious adornment. As a result of the early plastics industry, in the twentieth-century camphor was synthesized and became far cheaper. What was once an exotic luxury is now a cheap commodity, yet camphor remains pungent with the associations of religious (though no longer elite) traditions. Ubiquitous “unnatural” camphor was eventually dropped from certain rituals because of new concepts of pollution and health. Changes in trade and technology restricted and expanded access to camphor, and fluctuations in the exclusivity of this aromatic material altered its power to articulate political and religious charisma, and to signify tradition and orthodoxy. The consequent rejection of, or nostalgic attachment to, camphor has in turn had social, political, economic, and environmental repercussions.