Editing Musth (section)

==In popular culture==
* Valmiki, in ''[[Sundara Kanda]]'' of the Ramayana (7th to 4th centuries BCE), made reference to the [[Mahendra Mountains|Mahendra]] mountain shedding water like an elephant's rut juice upon being pressed by Hanuman.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Ramayana|first=Valmiki|date=August 2008|title=Sundara kaanda reference to Musth|url=https://valmikiramayan.net/utf8/sundara/sarga1/sundarasans1.htm#Verse14|access-date=22 May 2021|website=valmikiramayan.net}}</ref>
* In the ''[[Matanga Lila]]'' (300 BCE to 300 CE) musth is described: "Excitement, swiftness, odor, love passion, complete florescence of the body, wrath, prowess, and fearlessness are declared to be the eight excellences of musth."<ref name=Sukumar />{{rp|101}}
* [[Sangam poetry]] (300 BCE to 300 CE) describes musth. Kummatoor Kannanaar in Pathitrupatthu 12 describes it as follows:
{{poemquote|It was sweet to hear of your victories and fame and I came here desiring to see you. I came with my big family, passing few mountains where noble, young male elephants with coarse hair
and swaying walks have musth flowing from their
cheek glands and elephant mothers with calves wave wild jasmine twigs, chasing striped bees that swarm on the sweet musth.<ref>[https://learnsangamtamil.com/pathitrupathu/ Pathitrupatthu 12], learnsangamtamil.com. Accessed 3 December 2017.</ref>}}

* References to elephants in musth (whose [[temporin]] secretion is often referred to as "[[ichor]]") are for example in the ''[[Raghuvaṃśa]]'' (4th–5th century CE), where [[Kalidasa]] wrote that the king's elephants drip ichor in seven streams to match the scent put forth by the seven-leaved 'sapta-cchada' (= "seven-leaf") tree (perhaps ''[[Alstonia scholaris]]'').{{citation needed|date=December 2023}} 
* In [[Jules Verne]]'s ''[[Around the World in Eighty Days]]'' (1872), [[Phileas Fogg]] buys an elephant which was being fed sugar and butter so it would go into musth for combat purposes; however, the animal had been on this regimen only for a relatively short time so the condition has not yet presented.
* ''[[Shooting an Elephant]]'' is an essay by [[George Orwell]] written in 1936, in which he describes how an elephant in [[Burma]] had an attack of musth and killed an Indian, which in turn led to the narrator shooting the elephant.
* In his [[James Bond]] novel ''[[The Man with the Golden Gun (novel)|The Man With the Golden Gun]]'' (1965), [[Ian Fleming]] wrote that the villain [[Francisco Scaramanga]] was driven to become a cold-blooded assassin after authorities shot an elephant that he had ridden in his circus act because the elephant went on a rampage while in musth.
* The Tamil movie ''[[Kumki (film)|Kumki]]'' (2012), which revolves around a [[mahout]] and his trained elephant, shows the elephant in musth towards the climax. Captive elephants are either trained for duties in temples and cultural festivals or trained as a [[Kumki (elephant)|kumki elephant]] which confronts wild elephants and prevents them from entering villages. Elephants trained for temple duties are of a gentle nature and cannot face wild elephants. In this movie, a tribal village wants to hire a kumki elephant to chase away wild elephants which enter the village every harvest season. The mahout, who needs money, takes his temple-trained elephant to do this job, in the vain hope that wild elephants will not come in. But wild elephants start attacking the village on the harvest day. The temple-trained elephant enters musth and thus fights with the wild elephants, kills the most notorious among the herd but dies from injuries sustained during the fight.<ref name=":2">{{cite news|url=https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/tamil/movies/news/Kumki-climax-is-the-same/articleshow/17648504.cms |title=Vikram Prabhu: Kumki climax is the same |work=The Times of India |access-date=2020-03-25}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{cite news | url=http://www.thehindu.com/features/cinema/Kumki-Close-encounters/article12373956.ece | title=Kumki: Close encounters | work=The Hindu | first=Malathi | last=Rangarajan | date=15 December 2012 | access-date=2 November 2017}}</ref>