References to elephants in musth (whose temporin secretion is often referred to as "ichor") are frequent in classical Indian poetry and prose; for example, in the "Raghuvaṃśa", Kalidasa says 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"). Some poets turn it around to compare the elephant's ichor to the "saptacchada". The phenomenon has been described in poetry much before the time of Kalidasa, in Sanskrit, Tamil and Pali literature.