first mentioned in 304 AD as a preservative in wine and an incense wood for the summoning of spirit. During the Tang dynasty, it was used for magical and medicinal purposes, burnt in home to rid of all that is "weird and strange", and pieces of the wood were attached to children to ward off "evil vapours". The wood of Dalbergia parviflora has no smell until it is burnt, and only a small amount is used in joss sticks due to its strong aroma. According to 16th century herbologist and doctor Li Shizhen, it was also used "as an astringent, as a wash to cleanse sores and to excite granulations, and as a deodorizing and disinfecting agent." The sap of Emblica officinalis, also called laka, was used as a red dye by people of Java and the Malacca Strait area. According to Zhu Fan Zhi, the red-coloured sap of lakawood was once used as an ingredient in a product called "imitation dragon's blood" (imitation of a product from Dracaena cinnabari). The essential oils found in Dalbergia parviflora are nerolidol, farnesol, furfurol, aryl-benzofurans, and neoflavonoids. Historical records Ziteng was first described in 304 AD in a book on plants, Nanfang Caomu Zhuang (Plants of the Southern Regions) written by Ji Han, as having long and slender leaves, white flower and black seed. Its wood was chopped up and used as incense. The 9th century Tang poet Cao Tang (曹唐) wrote a poem on a Taoist theme that refers to the lakawood jiangzhenxiang: "Reddish dew gives me an image of upturning "the wine which extends life", Whitish smoke puts me in mind the burning of "jiangzhenxiang" ("the aromatic which brings down the True Ones")". Lakawood from South East Asia was first noted in 982 (early Song dynasty) as one of the 37 foreign products that can be freely traded in China. Descriptions of lakawood and its trade are given in accounts from the Sung and Yuan dynasty, Zhu Fan Zhi and Daoyi Zhilüe. These texts indicate that Lakawood was a product of various states in the Malay Peninsula, Singapore, Sumatra, Java, as well as Borneo. Daoyi Zhilüe also listed laka-wood as an export of the large-scale chiefdoms at Ma-li-lu (Maynila), Sulu (later the Sultanate of Sulu), and Min-to-lang (later the Sultanate of Maguindanao) in the modern-day Philippines. They suggest a significant trade in lakawood, but it was also regarded as a cheap