Fan Ye: Historian
Fan Ye (Liu Song of the Southern Dynasties), one of the key figures in the history of Chinese incense culture(香学).
Fan Ye · Liu Song of the Southern Dynasties
Identity:Historian
Representative incense works / incense matters:Preface to the Harmonized Incense Formula
Fan Ye's "Preface to the Harmonized Incense Formula" uses various spices as metaphors for people ("musk is inherently much tabooed," "agarwood is solid and easy to harmonize"), using blended incense to discuss the rapport between ruler and minister and the character of scholar-officials. It is the earliest famous piece in Chinese literary history to use incense as a metaphor for people, pioneering "using incense to symbolize virtue."
And Chinese incense culture(香学)
Seen through Fan Ye, Chinese incense culture(香学) is not an isolated craft, but a process in which generations of literati and artisans continuously documented, systematized, and spiritualized olfactory experience. Only by understanding these pioneers can one understand the weight of the wisp of incense in one's hands today.
Representative incense formulas · incense poems · incense discourses
On IncenseThe Formulary of Blended IncensePreface
Fan Ye's preface to The Formulary of Blended Incense likens incense to "sovereign and ministers": "Musk is inherently prone to excess, and too much of it must do harm; agarwood is truly mild and harmonious, and a full catty of it causes no injury; zerohu is hollow and dry, and zhantang is sticky and damp." Using the compounding of blended incense to discuss the merits and failings of ministers, it opened the precedent of using incense as a metaphor for people and stands as the origin of blended incense theory.