Mead ingredients of alcoholic beverages led to commercial mead becoming a more obscure beverage until recently. Some monasteries kept up the old traditions of mead-making as a by-product of beekeeping, especially in areas where grapes could not be grown. The English "mead" – "fermented honey drink" – derives from the Old English "meodu" or "medu", and Proto-Germanic, *"meduz" (source also of Old Norse mjöðr, Danish mjød, Old Frisian and Middle Dutch mede, Old High German metu, German Met "mead"). "Madh", and the related terms "mad" (मद, مد) and "madira" (मदिरा, مدِرا), also mean alcohol. These words are all derived from the
Soma (drink) some source...(Michael Wood (historian))(The Story of India) The finishing of "haoma" in Zoroastrianism may be glimpsed from the Avesta (particularly in the "Hōm Yast", Yasna 9), and Avestan language "*hauma" also survived as middle Persian "hōm". The plant "haoma" yielded the essential ingredient for the ritual drink, "parahaoma". In Yasna 9.22, haoma grants "speed and strength to warriors, excellent and righteous sons to those giving birth, spiritual power and knowledge to those who apply themselves to the study of the nasks". As the religion's chief cult divinity he came to be perceived as its divine priest. In Yasna 9.26, Ahura