Where does this Lac come from?

The antiquity of this natural resin goes as back as the vedas, where the Laksha taru (or Palas) in Sanskrit, or the Lac tree has been mentioned. In the Atharva Veda, there is a small chapter devoted to the description of Lac insect, its habits and usefulness. The story of the notorious Lac palace built by the Kauravas in a plot to eliminate the Pandavas, in an episode from the 3000-year-old Mahabharata epic sheds more light on the history of this material.

Lac 

Crimson red, plant sucking, tiny insects such as Laccifer lacca, Carteria lacca and Tachardia lacca colonize the branches of selected species of host trees and secrete a natural scarlet resin known as Lac. Later the different layers of resin residue on the coated branches of the host trees are scraped off as long sticks known as sticklac, crushed, sieved and washed several times to remove impurities till it shows up in natural red color. This Lac, acquired from Balrampur in Uttar Pradesh is further heated to settle down the impurities and get the best of it floating on the surface. To this molten Lac, which is originally brick red in color, the bangle makers further add wax (beroza) to increase the cohesiveness, titanium (Ghea pathar) to increase the volume and coloring agents. Generally the quantity of talc varies from 5% to 95% and is highly instrumental in determining the quality of the Lac bangles.