A rapid method for the identification of sandalwoods was developed based on proton nuclear magnetic resonance（1H NMR）with pattern recognition such as clustering analysis，principal component analysis（PCA）and partial least squares-discriminant analysis（PLS-DA）to build the models of identification.The samples included 6 species of sandalwood，i.e.Dalbergia oliveri，Dalbergia bariensis，Dalbergia cochinchinensis，Pterocarpus erinaceus，Pterocarpus macrocarpus and Pterocarpus santalinus，and 2 adulterants of sandalwood such as Gluta sp.and Pterocarpus tinctorius.After ultrasonic treatment in MeOD，the extracts were determined by 1H NMR.Results showed that the contribution of first three principal components derived from the PLS-DA model was added up to 79%.Except that group Dalbergia cochinchinensis interacted with group Dalbergia oliveri and group Pterocarpus santalinus，respectively，the other groups could be separated from each other.Obviously，the adulterants could be easily distinguished from the sandalwoods by this method.Therefore，the method was rapid and high sensitive in the distinguishment of adulterants，and showed a great potential in the identification of different species of sandalwood.