Shallaki

What is Shallaki?

Shallaki is the gum resin of Boswellia serrata, a modest deciduous tree of the dry forests of central India. The tree itself is easy to overlook, with pale, papery bark that flakes away in thin sheets. Its value lies in the resin. When the bark is cut or wounded, a milky sap seeps out and hardens in the air into small amber-to-golden tears. Those hardened tears are Shallaki.

In the West the same resin is known as Indian frankincense, a cousin of the frankincense burned as incense for thousands of years. Ayurveda knows it by other names too, kunduru among them, and prizes it less for its scent than for what the tradition holds it does inside the body.

What Ayurveda uses it for

Shallaki has one reputation above all others: it is the resin of the joints. The classical texts reach for it where the dry, cold, unsettled quality the tradition calls Vata has lodged in the joints and the structural tissues, leaving them stiff and ill at ease. The texts speak of it favouring the asthi dhatu, the bone and structural tissue, and the sandhi, the joints themselves.

It is also used more broadly as a warming, drying resin, in conditions the tradition reads as cold, damp or stagnant. But it is the joints with which its name is bound.

Its qualities, in plain words

Ayurveda describes every substance by a short list of qualities, and for Shallaki these explain its traditional use plainly.

It is warming, which is why the tradition turns to it for the cold, dry, jittery quality of Vata. It is light and drying, so where there is heaviness or damp it reduces rather than adds. And it is penetrating, which the texts take to mean it reaches into the deeper tissues rather than staying on the surface. It begins bitter and astringent on the tongue and finishes pungent after digestion, a finish the tradition links to its warming, mobilising direction. Put together: a warm, light, reaching resin, well suited to cold and stiff conditions of the joints.

How it is taken

Shallaki is used in several classical forms. As a fine powder, a churnam, it is taken in small measure with warm water, milk or ghee. It is worked into medicated oils for Abhyanga, the Ayurvedic oil massage, where it is applied to the body rather than swallowed. And it appears as a supporting resin in larger named preparations, including medicated ghees of the joint-and-Vata group and the well-known guggulu compounds, where it sits alongside the related resin Guggulu.

Because resins are concentrated, the tradition uses Shallaki in modest amounts and as part of a course rather than a single dose.

Good to know

Shallaki is a warming, drying substance. The texts are careful with warming resins in anyone who already runs hot, and use them most freely where the picture is cold, dry and stiff. It belongs, like much of Ayurveda, to steady use over a stretch of time rather than to a quick fix.

This entry describes the classical Ayurvedic understanding of the resin. It is not medical advice, and anyone with a health condition, and anyone who is pregnant, should speak to a qualified practitioner.

Frequently asked

Is Shallaki the same as frankincense? It is a close relative. Shallaki is the resin of Boswellia serrata, the Indian member of the frankincense family, which is why it is often called Indian frankincense.

How is it different from Guggulu? Both are warming Ayurvedic resins, and they are often combined. They come from different trees, Shallaki from Boswellia serrata and Guggulu from Commiphora, and the tradition links Shallaki especially with the joints.

Which part is used? The gum resin, the hardened sap that forms when the bark is cut. The leaf and wood are not part of its classical preparations.