Incense also known as agarbathi (or agarbatti) and joss sticks, in which an incense paste is rolled or moulded around a bamboo stick, are the main forms of incense in India. The bamboo method originated in India, and is distinct from the Nepali/Tibetan and Japanese methods of stick making without bamboo cores. Though the method is also used in the west, particularly in America, it is strongly associated with India. The basic ingredients are the bamboo stick, the paste (generally made of charcoal dust and joss/jiggit/gum/tabu powder - an adhesive made from the bark of litsea glutinosa and other trees), and
Incense clock for long periods of use, and often hung from the roofs of homes and temples. In fact one of the side jobs of the time keeper in ancient Chinese cities was to mark calibrated incense with individual lines, to denote length of a burn for sale to the public. This was done to supplement the individual's often meager incomes. In Chinese medicine doctors would make multiple partial breaks on an incense stick as instructions to the patient such that the patient would take a dose of medication every time the incense has burned to one of these breaks. In Japan,