History of incense
In the practice of sang, the offering of smell is elaborated. The offering of smell comes the Buddhist heritage from India. When Buddhism reached Tibet, it encountered the local practice of sang in which followers of Bon religion made big billows of smoke as process of purification and fumigation. Instead of eliminating the existing Bon practice of purification, Buddhism incorporated the sang offering and turned it into Buddhist practice combining offering of pleasant smell with purification. Thus, in the new sang ritual which the Buddhist syncretised, the practitioner is not only making an offering of smell to the olfactory sense but also undergoing a process of fumigation and purification. The Bhutanese word ‘sang’ means to clean and purify.