What Is in Indian Perfume Oil?
The ancient art of making Indian perfume oil, also known as attar or shamama, has been perfected in rural villages for centuries. Its ingredients are few but powerful and may include native Indian plants, fragrant herbs and flower petals. Does this Spark an idea?
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Significance
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Essential oils are the pure, distilled molecules of plants and are very potent. They have been used for centuries in India for healing and therapeutic purposes and are the base ingredients in perfume oil and attars.
Features
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Indian perfume oil contains fragrant plants and herbs native to the Indian subcontinent, such as jasmine, which is used in India for scenting rooms and perfuming the body and yields a deep red oil. Another, patchouli, is a sweet and spicy oil that is an excellent astringent. Others include rose, sandalwood or Indian ood.
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Process
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Unlike traditional Western essential oils, which are distilled and used alone, Indian perfume oils are combined to create unique and intriguing fragrances that differ in every batch. Indian perfume oil makers will take oils like jasmine and patchouli and distill them together with sandalwood oil as a fixative, which binds them together into the perfume oil you can wear.
Fun Fact
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Each Indian perfume oil is unique to the small village in which it is made, where families will perfect their attar-making technique through many generations and use ingredients from the natural environment around them.
Benefits
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Besides helping you smell exotic and lovely, Indian perfume oils contain substances that can fight depression and improve your mood, as well as be used as as potent aphrodisiacs. Also, they contain none of the artificial ingredients and petrochemicals found in Western perfumes.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit Image by Flickr.com, courtesy of nicephore
