The word mada shares its root with the Sanskrit terms for intoxication and the ichor that streams from a rutting elephant's temples, and classical commentary leans on both images deliberately: mada is pride experienced as a kind of drunkenness, a mind so filled with its own sense of advantage that, like an intoxicated person, it loses accurate judgement of its situation and of other people.
Puranic and epic literature catalogues the specific grounds mada commonly attaches to, a list that recurs with only minor variation across texts: wealth, learning, lineage, physical beauty, youthful strength, and, treated as especially dangerous because it disguises itself as virtue, pride in one's own asceticism or spiritual attainment. This last case draws particular attention from commentators because it is the one most likely to escape a practitioner's own notice: a person who has genuinely renounced wealth or overcome ordinary desire can still fall into mada over the renunciation itself, mistaking the achievement for a permanent exemption from the enemy the achievement was meant to defeat. The Bhagavad Gita groups mada among the qualities of the demonic nature, asuri sampad, in its sixteenth chapter, contrasted there with humility, listed among the divine qualities, a direct opposition the text states rather than leaves implicit.