The answer first: agarwood in Xiangcheng is placed by Zhou Jiazhou in Volume One of the whole book, "Incense Products I · Agarwood of Various Countries," and it is the cornerstone of the twenty-eight-volume system of incense materials. He recorded three things—origins (Tianzhu, Jiaozhi, Champa, Chenla, Hainan and other countries), categories (shengjie, shujie, huangshu, zhanxiang, chonglou), and formation and authentication—and he took "sinks upon entering water" as the first hard criterion for judging agarwood. The term "sinking grade" in today's market has its roots right here. To read the original text word by word, please enter Volume One from this site's [Master Index of the Annotated Translation of Xiangcheng](/pages/zhongguo-xiangxue/yizhu/index.html).
Key Points
- Volume One of Xiangcheng is devoted specifically to agarwood; by opening the book with it, Zhou Jiazhou effectively established agarwood as "the foremost of all incenses."
- "Sinks in water" is the first criterion in the entire book: the heartwood's nodes, when placed in water, sink. This directly gave rise to the later sinking-grade/floating-grade classification.
- Volume One gives the fivefold classification—shengjie, shujie, huangshu, zhanxiang, chonglou—which largely corresponds to today's market terms "bantou, chonglou, laoliao."
- Zhou Jiazhou drew on a wide range of sources but noted their origins, often citing Nanfang Caomu Zhuang, Lingwai Daida, and Zhufan Zhi; his approach was "copy widely, label clearly."
- The most practical value of reading Volume One is translating the ancients' sensory criteria (sinking in water, mode of resin formation) into indicators that can be verified today.
Zhou Jiazhou was a Yangzhou scholar active between the Wanli and Chongzhen reigns of the Ming dynasty. According to the preface to Volume Twenty-Eight (translated paraphrase): "The uses of incense are most extensive... I have loved it since childhood, collected various schools, and accumulated much over many years before compiling this book." In a great work of twenty-eight volumes, what is written in the first volume is the author's most direct statement of attitude.
He placed agarwood in Volume One for three reasons. First,it was the most widely used: in Ming dynasty incense practice, agarwood was both the leading player in single-incense burning and the base "bone" in blended incenses; almost all high-grade incense formulas could not do without it. Second,it had the best system for classification: agarwood had a clear sequence of origins and a method of categorization, making it suitable as the model for the "incense products" section of the whole book; the later volumes on sandalwood, frankincense, borneol, and musk all followed this same approach. Third,it had the highest value: the Song already had the saying "one liang of agarwood, one liang of gold"; placing the most expensive first conforms to the common practice of Ming dynasty catalog-type books.
The opening explanatory note on this site's annotated translation page for Volume One says exactly this:
The first volume of Xiangcheng is devoted specifically to agarwood and is the cornerstone of the twenty-eight-volume system of incense materials.
The content of Volume One can be divided into three parts.The first part is originsThe original text compiled and recorded on this site reads as follows:
Agarwood is sinking incense. It comes from Tianzhu, Jiaozhi, Champa, Chenla, Hainan, and other countries. The heartwood knots of the tree sink when placed in water, hence the name chenshui (sinking in water).
(Quoted from this site'sXiang Cheng, Volume 1, annotated translation, it is a compiled and recorded text punctuated and paragraphed according to modern conventions, not a verbatim photocopy; for collation, please consult the public-domain photocopy editions.)
This string of place names is worth pausing over. Tianzhu, Jiaozhi, Champa, Chenla, Hainan form a geographical line from the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea, reflecting the Ming people'soverseas sources of aromatic medicinescognitive map. Interestingly, the Ming people placed "Hainan" last—not because it was unimportant, but on the contrary, connoisseurs of the Ming and Qing dynasties unanimously recognized Hainan production as the finest; Ding Wei, in his Tianxiang Zhuan, even devoted a dedicated account to Hainan agarwood.What is ranked earlier is "the source is far away," not "the quality is high", this turn must be made when reading ancient texts.
The second block is categories and formation causes, still the core of Volume 1:
Its grades differ as shengjie (living结), shujie (mature结), huangshu (yellow-ripe), zhanxiang (stack incense), and chonglou (insect-bored): shengjie is formed when the tree is cut or felled by knife or axe, and the resin veins gather and condense; shujie is formed when a withered tree rots naturally, and the resin fluid flows and congeals.
Translated: shengjie is when a living tree is wounded by knife or axe, and the tree body condenses aromatic resin at the wound; shujie is when the tree has died, the wood naturally decays, and the aromatic resin flows and congeals within. One lies in the wound made by human force, the other in the decay wrought by time.
The third block is authenticationBesides recording producing regions and categories, Volume 1 also collects the authentication methods of predecessors, often quoting Nanfang Caomu Zhuang, Lingwai Daida, and Zhufan Zhi. This is also why Xiang Cheng has always been valued by later generations—it does not merely copy formulas, it also copies "how to tell true from false."
The four characters "placed in water, it sinks" are the hardest single criterion given in Volume 1. The ancients had no density meter, so they used water. This criterion is simple but very effective: agarwood sinks because the wood is thoroughly permeated with resin; when the oil ratio is high enough, the overall density is greater than that of water.
Put in today's terms, we need to add two points. First,sinking in water does not equal good incense, it only equals high oil content. Material with high oil content indeed has a thicker, longer-lasting aroma, but whether the aromatic charm is good also depends on the producing region, the way the incense is formed, and the aging period. A string of sinking-grade plantation material may not smell better than a piece of semi-sinking wild old material. Second,sinking in water can be faked: oil soaking, weight pressing, and lead filling can all make a piece of material that originally floats sink. The ancients knew this too, which is why Volume 1 includes authentication methods.
The shopkeeper once handled a piece of material in the store: a customer brought in a piece of "sinking-grade old material," black and shiny, which sank immediately in water, with a high asking price. On hefting it, it felt unreasonably heavy—agarwood has an upper density limit, and that piece's weight exceeded the normal range; looking again, the oil lines on the surface were too uniform, a typical case of oil-soaking and artificial aging. That customer later left the goods at the store for a week of re-inspection; the oil seeped outward and the smell was dull.Ancient texts teach us to look at "sinking in water," and also teach us not to look only at "sinking in water."
The five-class method in Volume One largely corresponds to today's colloquial market terms, but there are a few pitfalls:
| Xiang Cheng, Volume One | Ancient Meaning (Translated and Paraphrased) | Roughly Corresponds Today To |
|---|---|---|
| Live resin formation | Formed when a living tree is injured; the qi is clear and uplifting | Live-formed material, plank-top material |
| Mature resin formation | Formed after a dead trunk naturally decays; the flavor is mellow and thick | Mature resin material, earth-sinking, old material |
| Yellow-ripe | Resin formed toward the light, yellow in color | Yellow-ripe agarwood, low-oil fragments |
| Zhanxiang | Formed at the edge of branches and trunks, half-sinking and half-floating | Half-sinking material |
| Insect leakage | Eaten and bored by ants and insects; resin forms along the boreholes | Insect leakage, ant-sinking |
The discrepancies mainly lie in two terms.The meaning of 'yellow-ripe' drifted in Ming and Qing literature, sometimes referring to a low grade, sometimes specifically to a type of mature resin formation; one must read it in context.'Zhanxiang' is rarely used by people today, but it is key to understanding the ancients' grading—they understood early on that agarwood is not simply either sinking or floating; there is a large transitional zone in between.
The more detailed classification in Ding Wei's "Tianxiang Zhuan" (excerpted summary): "There are four types of incense: chen, zhan, shengjie, and huangshu; there are twelve forms, and agarwood accounts for eight of them." The Song dynasty people already divided agarwood into twelve forms, of which eight can be called "chen." This shows thatThe matter of grading has been competitive since the Song dynasty, not invented by modern people.
"Xiang Cheng" is often described as a "compilation," which is true but incomplete. Zhou Jiazhou's approach was toextensively quote predecessors without concealing the source—in Volume One, "Nanfang Caomu Zhuang," "Lingwai Daida," and "Zhufan Zhi" are all cited, and in Volume Nine, ambergris cites "Lingwai Daida," "Zhufan Zhi," "Baishi Huibian," and Ye Tinggui's "Mingxiang Pu."
This habit was not common in Ming dynasty catalogues; many books copied without saying so. Zhou Jiazhou marked them, which is equivalent to leaving readersa ladder to trace one level up: if you feel "Xiang Cheng" does not explain enough, follow the book title back to the original. This is exactly why, when we do the translation and annotation, we list "Collation Notes · Edition and Editorial Notes" as a separate section—quotations must have sources, and variant readings must be explained.
Volume One has another detail worth mentioning: different transliterations of foreign place names appear in several places (e.g., "Zhancheng" also written as "Zhanpo"). This is not a copying error; it is thatancient foreign place names inherently had no fixed characters. Our approach is to follow the original quotations in "Xiang Cheng" and note variant writings in the collation notes, without arbitrarily changing characters.
Let's talk practically. The three criteria given in Volume One are still usable today, but need to be translated into modern language:
The shopkeeper's advice is:Read ancient texts to set standards, examine the actual material to make choices. Once you understand the three terms "shengjie/shujie/sinking grade" in books, you won't be led by sales talk like "black is good, sinking is real" in the store. If you have material you're unsure about, you can bring it to the store and we'll take a look for free; if it's inconvenient to go out, you can call 400-809-1913 and send photos.
Xiangcheng has twenty-eight volumes, compiled by Zhou Jiazhou of the Ming dynasty. Agarwood is in Volume One, "Incense Categories I: Agarwood of Various Countries"; sandalwood and frankincense are in Volume Two; ambergris is in Volume Nine; and incense formulas are concentrated from Volume Twenty-One onward. This siteAnnotated Translation General Table of ContentsArranged by volume order; click to jump directly.
Yes. The Xiangcheng handed down to us traces back to the Ming Chongzhen printed edition; extant versions include the Wenyuange Siku Quanshu edition, the Siku Huiyao edition, and various Qing manuscript copies, all of which are public-domain resources. The "Collation Notes" section of each volume's annotated translation page on this site includes links to authoritative scanned copies; the "Original Text" on the page is a collated transcription punctuated and paragraphed according to modern conventions,not a verbatim scanned definitive edition. For verbatim collation, please rely on the scanned editions.
Broadly corresponding, but not entirely equivalent. The ancients judged sufficient oil content by "sinking immediately upon entering water," which is precisely the origin of today's "sinking grade"; however, the ancients also distinguished "zhanxiang" (half-sinking, half-floating), showing they were aware of the intermediate zone. Today's market also has造假 methods such as oil soaking and weight loading, so "sinking" can only serve as one reference indicator, not a conclusion.
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