Thanks to the perfumers of Kannauj, you no longer need to pin all your hopes on nature to provide you with the musky smell of wet earth. There are several shops in Vijay Market brimming with aromatic goodies from scented oils to incense and attar of the finest quality, but the most selling item remains the simple yet intoxicating mitti attar. ![]() ![]() At the chaotic Vijay Market, trained hands and noses are busy mixing rare and exquisite ingredients that go into these exotic fragrances while others can be seen sorting through the piles of flowers and herbs. Home to over 250 perfumeries, many of which are on the brink of extinction, it seems like the whole of Kannauj is engaged in one or other process of making attar. Today, if you walk through Kannauj, you can still see the centuries-old facades of crumbling old perfume houses that give the whole town a medieval feel. All these perfumes have been protected under the Geographical Indication (GI) tag of Kannauj Perfumes under the GI Act 1999 of the Government of India. Gulab, Keora, Hina, Champa, Bakul, Parijata, Chameli, Motia, Genda, Ratrani, and Kadam are some of the other incredibly fragrant attars that are still being made. Mitti attar is just one of the lovely fragrances in the Kannauj perfumer’s repertoire. The fragrant essential oil trapped in the sandalwood oil base, contained in these leather bottle or kuppis, is placed in the sun to allow the excess water to evaporate and for the true scent of attar to develop – warm, organic and mineral-rich. The perfumes were traditionally stored in camel-skin pockets but are now kept in bottles made from buffalo skins. The man, who was from Kannauj, figured that the oil was accidentally produced when rose petals came in contact with warm water, and presumably devised the steam-and-condense process to extract it. This is how it goes: A servant at Jahangir’s palace in Agra noticed some drops of rose oil floating on the surface of Noor Jehan’s bathing pool. There is a legend in the historical biography of Akbar, Ain-I-Akbari, written by Abul Fazl, about how the city’s perfume industry started. The perfumers of Kannauj also made the scented oils Mughal Emperors were so immensely fond of. Situated on the historical scent trade route that brought perfumes from India to the Middle East, Kannauj’s perfumeries were famed for their magnificent attars. ![]() The fragrant credentials of this city, known as the ‘Grasse of the East’ and ‘India’s Perfume Capital’, are age old. The perfume of petrichor is distilled into miniature glass vials at Kannauj, a small town on the banks of river Ganga that has been guarding the secret of traditional Indian perfumes for centuries. If you wish you could capture the wonderful scent of wet earth into a bottle, an old city in Uttar Pradesh made that possible a long time ago. Love that wonderful earthy smell that comes with the first rain of the season? Known as petrichor, this ethereal essence is a medley of molecules that rises from thirsty soil soaking in the long-awaited drops of rain.
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