It's not really known when and where firecrackers originated. Although both the Ramayana & the Mahabharata mention the bursting of firecrackers to celebrate victories, the common consensus is that to the use of firecrackers originated in the human province of China in 200 BC when the Han dynasty was in power .
A villager from Human threw chunks of green bamboo into the fire because he did not have sufficient dry fuel. The bamboo chunks sizzled, blackened & then exploded with a deafening sound, startling the man but giving him the idea of getting rid of evil spirits by exploding bamboos. It wasn't long before most people in China began to burn bamboo to keep evil spirits away.
In 600 AD, alchemist Sun Si Miao developed a gun-powder like mixture by mixing saltpetre, honey, sulphur and arsenic disulphide, which produced a hot, bright flame when heated over fire.
However, the first to use the mixture as firecracker was a chinese monk named Li Tian. When Prime -minister Wei Zhou of the Tang dynasty was plagued by the ghost of an evil dragon he had killed, Li Tian filled a bamboo with the gun powder like mixture and set it on fire. The loud explosion is said to have so frightened the ghost that it stopped haunting him. Li Tian came to be known as the 'father of the firecracker' in China and during the song dynasty, a temple was built to honor him. On 18 April every year, people offer sacrifices at the temple to commemorate the invention of the firecracker.
The bamboo was replaced by paper rolls after paper was invented. The firecracker or baozhu was made by rolling sheets of paper into small tube, stuffing it with gun powder and fixing it with a fuse.
Since the 18th century, the Human province has been the center of firecracker production in China. The world's largest manufacturer of fireworks today is China.
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