Laksha vs Shellac: Same Resin, Different Stages of Refinement

Is Laksha the same thing as shellac?

Yes, in substance. Laksha is the Sanskrit name for the resin produced by the lac insect. Shellac is the trade name for the same resin once it has been washed, melted and filtered into thin sheets or flakes. The difference between the two words is not botanical or zoological. It is a difference of stage and of vocabulary. One word belongs to a classical Indic literature that is roughly two millennia old, the other to a modern industry that grades and sells the material by purity, colour and wax content.

That single fact resolves most of the confusion. A reader who meets Laksha in a classical compendium and then finds Shellac printed on a food packet or a cosmetic carton is looking at one raw material at two points along the same processing line. What changes along that line is how much insect matter, plant debris, wax and natural colourant remain in the resin. Where it came from does not change. For the fuller picture, see the complete guide to Laksha in Ayurveda.

What is shellac actually made from?

Shellac is an animal product. It is not a plant gum, not a tree sap and not a mineral. It is secreted by a scale insect, currently classified as Kerria lacca and long known in older literature as Laccifer lacca or Tachardia lacca.

The insect is tiny and lives in dense colonies on the twigs and small branches of certain host trees. The females settle on the bark, insert their mouthparts and feed on the sap. As they feed, they exude a resinous fluid that hardens on contact with air. Because the colonies are so crowded, the individual secretions run together and form a continuous crust over the twig, sometimes thick enough to hide the branch entirely. That encrusted twig is the starting material for everything that follows.

This deserves stating plainly, because readers often assume that anything called a resin is a plant exudate. Laksha is not. It is animal derived, and therefore not vegan and not vegetarian by most definitions in use.

How does the resin get from the branch to the flake?

The trade recognises three broad stages, and their names appear constantly in technical writing about the material.

Sticklac

Sticklac is the crust as it comes off the branch, twig fragments and all. It contains the hardened resin plus wax, a natural red colourant, insect bodies and bark. It is dark, irregular and obviously unrefined. When a classical text describes Laksha in its natural form, this or something close to it is generally what is meant.

Seedlac

Seedlac is sticklac that has been crushed, sieved and washed in water. Washing removes most of the loose debris and carries off a large part of the water soluble red colourant, which was historically collected separately and used as a dye. What remains is a granular material, roughly the size and look of coarse grains, ranging from pale amber to deep reddish brown depending on the batch. Seedlac is the intermediate product and is still recognisably close to the raw resin.

Shellac

Shellac is seedlac taken one step further, either by heat filtration through cloth or by dissolving in a solvent and filtering. The filtered resin is drawn into thin sheets, which are broken into flakes. At this point the material is uniform, glassy, translucent and free of visible debris. Commercial grades multiply from here: button lac in small round discs, garnet and orange grades by depth of colour, dewaxed grades, and bleached grades made much paler. Colour, hardness and wax content are what a buyer chooses between, and those same visual markers underpin how the material is identified and graded.

Why does an ingredient list say Shellac when a classical text says Laksha?

The two naming systems answer to different authorities. Classical Sanskrit nomenclature names a substance within a body of literature, alongside its synonyms, its groupings and the qualities attributed to it. Modern ingredient labelling names a commercial grade according to standardised conventions, which is why the same material appears as Shellac in cosmetic ingredient lists and as the additive number E904 in food labelling within the European Union, where it is used chiefly as a glaze.

Neither name is more correct than the other. They simply describe the material from different vantage points. A classical author writing about Laksha is describing a substance with a defined character and a place in a scheme of Guna, the qualities a substance is held to possess. A regulator writing Shellac into an ingredient list is identifying a refined resin with a known composition. The classical handling of the substance, its groupings and the synonyms used across the compendia are set out in the article on Laksha in the classical Ayurvedic texts.

What other names does this resin travel under?

The material has collected an unusually large number of names, partly because it has been traded across languages for a very long time and partly because each stage of refinement acquired its own label.

• Laksha, the Sanskrit name, used throughout classical Indic literature.
• Lac, the general English term for the crude resin, which is also the root of the word lacquer.
• Lacca, the Latinised form, which survives in older pharmacy and botany writing.
• Gum lac, an old English trade term, somewhat misleading because the material is a resin rather than a gum.
• Lac resin and lac dye, which distinguish the resinous part from the red colourant washed out of it.
• Shellac, from shell plus lac, describing the thin sheets the refined resin is formed into.
• Kerria lacca and the older Laccifer lacca, the zoological names for the insect itself.

Because of this crowd of synonyms, a search for one term often turns up sources that never mention the others, which is a large part of why the two words look like two different things.

Does Laksha always mean the refined grade?

Usually not, and this is the one place where the equivalence needs a qualification. When classical authors write about Laksha, they are describing a material in a form available to them, which sits at the raw or lightly washed end of the scale rather than at the bleached and dewaxed end. Heat filtration into flakes, solvent refining and chemical bleaching are industrial developments.

So the accurate statement is this. Laksha and shellac are the same material, but Laksha in a classical context usually points to something closer to sticklac or seedlac, while shellac in a modern context points to the filtered flake. Anyone lining up a classical description against a modern specification should keep that offset in mind.

Is Laksha a vegan or plant based ingredient?

No. Because the resin is secreted by an insect and because the crude material contains insect bodies before refining, shellac is excluded by vegan standards and is usually excluded by strict vegetarian standards as well. Refined and dewaxed grades are cleaner, but the origin is unchanged by refining.

Readers sometimes group Laksha with plant exudates such as tree gums, since both are sticky substances that harden in air and both are collected from branches. The resemblance is superficial. A gum is produced by the tree itself, whereas lac is produced by an insect living on it, and the tree contributes only the sap the insect feeds on.

Frequently asked questions

Is Laksha shellac, or are they different substances?

They are the same substance. Laksha is the Sanskrit name for the lac resin, and shellac is that resin after it has been washed, filtered and formed into flakes. The word chosen usually tells you which tradition the writer belongs to and, loosely, how refined the material being described is.

What is the difference between sticklac, seedlac and shellac?

Sticklac is the crude crust taken from the branch with twigs and insect matter still in it. Seedlac is sticklac crushed and washed, which removes debris and most of the water soluble red colourant. Shellac is seedlac filtered by heat or solvent and formed into flakes.

Is shellac made from insects?

Yes. It is secreted by the lac insect, Kerria lacca, formerly named Laccifer lacca, which lives in colonies on the branches of host trees and exudes the resin as it feeds. Shellac is therefore an animal derived material, not a plant resin.

Why is shellac sometimes called gum lac or lacca?

Both are historical trade and pharmacy names for the same material. Gum lac is an old English term, inaccurate in that the substance is a resin rather than a true gum, and lacca is the Latinised form that appears in older European writing.

What is E904 on a food label?

E904 is the additive number used in European food labelling for shellac, where it appears mainly as a glaze. It is the same resin described as Laksha in classical Ayurvedic literature, in a refined grade.

Is lac dye the same as lac resin?

No. Lac dye is the water soluble red colourant that washes out of the crude resin during processing, and it was historically collected on its own as a dyestuff. Lac resin is the insoluble material left behind, which goes on to become seedlac and then shellac.