Madhu

Madhu (Hindustani: मधु or مدهو) is a word used in several Indo-Aryan languages meaning honey or sweet. It also means mead and is used for alcohol. The word originates in Sanskrit and has cognates in most Indo-European languages.

Madhu, and the related terms mad (मद, مد) and madira (मदिरा, مدِرا), also mean alcohol. These words are all derived from the Sanskrit language, and are Indo-European cognates of the English mead, Greek μέθυ, Avestan madu, Persian may,Latvian and Lithuanian medus, German Met and Old Church Slavonic ] мєдъ (medŭ).

In this sense, these terms are also used for additional words related to alcohol. For instance, madhushala is a Hindi word for an establishment that serves alcohol, as is madiralaya (lit. abode of alcohol, c.f. himalaya, abode of snow). Madmast (मदमस्त, مدمست) means intoxicated due to alcohol, and is a word frequently used in poetry and song in the region, sometimes as a stylized reference to being in an emotional state resembling intoxication for other reasons, such as romantic love.

Madhu has been used for millennia in a similar metaphorical sense as wine is in English, e.g. "the wine of truth," and employed in that manner in Hindu religious literature. For example, the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, believed to have been composed in the first millennium BCE, contains a chapter called the Madhu Brahmana and "the secret essence of the Vedas themselves, was called the madhu-vidya or honey doctrine."

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