Shen Li: Scholar
Shen Li (Northern Song Dynasty), one of the key figures in the history of Chinese Incense Culture(香学).
Shen Li · Northern Song Dynasty
Identity:Scholar
Representative Incense Works / Incense Deeds:Xiangpu (Incense Manual, lost)
Shen Li's Xiangpu is the earliest incense manual compiled in the Song Dynasty; it is now lost, and its outline survives only through citations by Hong Chu and Chen Jing. It marks the beginning of the "cataloging" of Chinese Incense Culture(香学), signifying incense's shift from experience to systematic documentation.
And Chinese Incense Culture(香学)
From Shen Li's perspective, Chinese Incense Culture(香学) is not an isolated craft, but a process in which generations of literati and artisans continually documented, systematized, and spiritualized olfactory experience. Only by understanding these pioneers can one understand the weight of that wisp of incense in your hand today.
Representative Incense Formulas · Incense Poems · Incense Discourses
On IncenseXiangpu (Treatise on Incense)
Compiled by Shen Li (courtesy name Lizhi) of the Song DynastyXiangpu (Treatise on Incense), the foremost incense treatise of the Song Dynasty (now lost; preserved through quotations in works such as Xiangcheng), which records incense types, incense practices, and incense formulas, and paved the way for the later treatises of Hong Chu and Chen Jing.
Incense Formulas (compilation)
Shen LiXiangpu (Treatise on Incense)The incense formulas it records were largely inherited by later works such as Chen's Xiangpu and Xiangcheng, such as "flower-steamed agarwood" and "imitation rose incense."