What sandalwood paste is
Sandalwood paste is made by grinding sandalwood heartwood against a wet stone until the friction releases a pale, fragrant emulsion of wood powder, oil and water. It is applied to skin as a cooling preparation and to the body and images in Hindu, Jain and Sufi worship. Nothing is added and nothing is cooked.
Sandalwood paste has one of the shortest ingredient lists of any preparation still in daily use: heartwood, and water. Everything that makes it distinctive — the colour, the smell, the cooling feel — comes out of the wood during grinding.
What is actually in it
The fragrant compounds in sandalwood sit in the heartwood, the dense inner wood of a mature tree, and in the roots. The pale outer sapwood carries almost none. When a billet of heartwood is rubbed against a wet stone, three things come off together: fine wood particles, a small amount of the oil held in them, and the water you have been adding. That suspension is the paste.
The oil fraction is dominated by two closely related sesquiterpene alcohols, α-santalol and β-santalol. They are the reason sandalwood smells the way it does, and their presence is the working definition of true sandalwood — a point that matters enormously once you start buying it, because most of what is sold as sandalwood contains neither.
The names it goes by
| Name | Language | What it refers to |
|---|---|---|
| chandana | Sanskrit | Sandalwood generally; the root of most Indian names for it |
| srigandha | Sanskrit | Literally “fragrant one”; used especially of the tree |
| sweta chandana | Sanskrit | White sandalwood — true sandalwood, Santalum album |
| rakta chandana | Sanskrit | Red sandalwood — a different tree entirely, Pterocarpus santalinus |
| gandham | Telugu | The fragrant paste specifically, rather than the wood |
The white/red distinction is the one that causes the most confusion, and it is not a shade of the same thing — see telling real sandalwood apart.
What it is not
Three substitutions are common enough to be worth naming immediately.
It is not sandalwood oil. Oil is steam-distilled from the wood and is far more concentrated. Paste is the whole wood in suspension, and behaves completely differently on skin.
It is not “sandalwood” from a different genus. Red sandalwood (Pterocarpus santalinus) and West Indian sandalwood (Amyris balsamifera) are unrelated trees that borrowed the name. Neither contains santalols. Red sandalwood is genuinely used in Ayurvedic practice, but for different purposes and with a different preparation.
It is usually not what is in the tube. Commercially sold “sandalwood paste” is generally powder, water, a thickener and a preservative, often with fragrance added. That can be a perfectly reasonable product; it is simply not the same material as paste ground fresh, and it should not be priced as though it were.
Where to go next
- How to make sandalwood paste — the method, in both the traditional and the practical form
- Sandalwood paste on skin — what it is used for, and what the evidence supports
- Telling real sandalwood from substitutes — the single most useful thing to learn about this material
Common questions
- Is sandalwood paste the same as sandalwood powder?
- No. Powder is milled dry heartwood. Paste is what you get when powder or a billet of wood is combined with water. Most paste sold ready-made is powder that has been wetted and preserved, which is not the same material as paste ground fresh on a stone.
- Is sandalwood paste edible?
- No. It is a topical and ritual preparation, not a food. Some traditional systems administer sandalwood internally in other forms under supervision, but the paste described here is for external and ceremonial use only.
- What does sandalwood paste smell like?
- Soft, milky and woody, with very little top note. Freshly ground paste smells markedly quieter than sandalwood oil, because the odorants are still bound up in wet wood rather than concentrated.
Sources
- Whispers of the sacred wood: a comprehensive review of Santalum albumdzarc.comCited for: Composition of the heartwood and traditional preparation and use.
- A Comparison of the Composition of Selected Commercial Sandalwood Oils with the International Standardpmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.govCited for: Santalol content as the defining marker of true sandalwood.