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
Chinese gods and immortals "god" and "deity", Latin "genius" (meaning a generative principle, "spirit") and "deus" or "divus"; "dì", sometimes translated as "thearch", implies a manifested or incarnate "godly" power. It is etymologically and figuratively analogous to the concept of "di" as the base of a fruit, which falls and produces other fruits. This analogy is attested in the "Shuowen Jiezi" explaining "deity" as "what faces the base of a melon fruit". The latter term 仙 "xiān" unambiguously means a man who has reached immortality, similarly to the Western idea of "hero". Chinese traditional theology, which comes in different interpretations according to the classic