The Jungle Book

The Jungle Book is an 1894 collection of stories by the English author Rudyard Kipling. Most of the characters are animals such as Shere Khan the tiger and Baloo the bear, though a principal character is the boy or "man-cub" Mowgli, who is raised in the jungle by wolves. Most stories are set in a forest in India; one place mentioned repeatedly is "Seeonee", in the central state of Madhya Pradesh.
A major theme in the book is abandonment followed by fostering, as in the life of Mowgli, echoing Kipling's own childhood. The theme is echoed in the triumph of protagonists including Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and The White Seal over their enemies, as well as Mowgli's. Another important theme is of law and freedom; the stories are not about animal behaviour, still less about the Darwinian struggle for survival, but about human archetypes in animal form. They teach respect for authority, obedience, and knowing one's place in society with "the law of the jungle", but the stories also illustrate the freedom to move between different worlds, such as when Mowgli moves between the jungle and the village. Critics have also noted the essential wildness and lawless energies in the stories, reflecting the irresponsible side of human nature.
The Jungle Book has remained popular, partly through its many adaptations for film and other media. Critics such as Swati Singh have noted that even critics wary of Kipling for his supposed imperialism have admired the power of his storytelling. The book has been influential in the scout movement, whose founder, Robert Baden-Powell, was a friend of Kipling. Percy Grainger composed his Jungle Book Cycle around quotations from the book.

Context

Rudyard Kipling's stories were first printed in magazines in 1893 and 1894; the original publications also contained hand-sketched illustrations, with some from John Lockwood Kipling, his father. Rudyard himself was born in Mumbai—then referred to as Bombay—in the western coastal Indian state of Maharashtra, where he spent his first six years of life. After around 10 years back in England, and having completed his schooling, Kipling went back to India to work for nearly 6½ years. Later on, his original stories would be written when he lived at Naulakha, the property and home he owned in Dummerston, Vermont, US. There is evidence that Kipling wrote the collection of stories for his daughter, Josephine ; a first-edition copy of the book—including a handwritten note by the author to his young daughter—was discovered at the National Trust's Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire, in 2010.

Book

Description

The tales in the book are fables, using animals in an anthropomorphic manner to teach moral lessons. The verses of "The Law of the Jungle", for example, lay down rules for the safety of individuals, families, and communities. Kipling put in them nearly everything he knew or "heard or dreamed about the Indian jungle". Other readers have interpreted the work as allegories of the politics and society of the time.

Origins

The stories in The Jungle Book were inspired in part by the ancient Indian fable texts such as the Panchatantra and the Jataka tales. For example, an older moral-filled mongoose and snake version of the "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" story by Kipling is found in Book 5 of Panchatantra. In a letter to the American author Edward Everett Hale, Kipling wrote:
In a letter written and signed by Kipling in or around 1895, states Alison Flood in The Guardian, Kipling confesses to borrowing ideas and stories in the Jungle Book: "I am afraid that all that code in its outlines has been manufactured to meet 'the necessities of the case': though a little of it is bodily taken from Esquimaux rules for the division of spoils. In fact, it is extremely possible that I have helped myself promiscuously but at present cannot remember from whose stories I have stolen".
Shere Khan, the main antagonist of the story, is named after the historical Afghan Emperor Sher Shah Suri. The character of Mowgli may have been inspired by William Henry Sleeman's accounts of feral children nurtured by wolves.

Setting

Kipling lived in India as a child, and most of the stories are evidently set there, though it is not entirely clear where. The Kipling Society notes that "Seeonee" is mentioned several times; that the "cold lairs" must be in the jungled hills of Chittorgarh; and that the first Mowgli story, "In the Rukh", is set in a forest reserve somewhere in North India, south of Simla. "Mowgli's Brothers" was positioned in the Aravalli hills of Rajasthan in an early manuscript, later changed to Seonee, and Bagheera treks from "Oodeypore", a journey of reasonable length to Aravalli but a long way from Seoni. Seoni has a tropical savanna climate, with a dry and a rainy season. This is drier than a monsoon climate and does not support tropical rainforest. Forested parks and reserves that claim to be associated with the stories include Kanha Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh, and Pench National Park, near Seoni, but Kipling never visited the area.

Chapters

The book is arranged with a story in each chapter. Each story is followed by a poem that serves as an epigram.

Story title	Summary	Epigrammatic poem	Notes	Image
Mowgli's Brothers	A boy is raised by wolves in the Indian jungle with the help of Baloo the bear and Bagheera the black panther, who teach him the "Law of the Jungle". Some years later, the wolfpack and Mowgli are threatened by the tiger Shere Khan. Mowgli brings fire, driving off Shere Khan but showing that he is a man and must leave the jungle.	"Hunting-Song of the Seeonee Pack"	The story has been published as a short book: Night-Song in the Jungle.
Kaa's Hunting	During the time Mowgli was with the wolf pack, he is abducted by the Bandar-log to the ruined city. Baloo and Bagheera set out to rescue him with Kaa the python. Kaa defeats the Bandar-log, frees Mowgli, and hypnotises the monkeys and the other animals with his dance. Mowgli rescues Baloo and Bagheera from the spell.	"Road Song of the Bandar-Log"		File:John Charles Dollman - Mowgli made leader of the Bandar Log.jpg\|thumb\|center\|Mowgli made leader of the Bandar-log by John Charles Dollman, 1903
Tiger! Tiger!	Mowgli returns to the human village and is adopted by Messua and her husband, who believe him to be their long-lost son. Mowgli leads the village boys who herd the village's buffaloes. Shere Khan comes to hunt Mowgli, but he is warned by Gray Brother wolf, and with Akela they find Shere Khan asleep, and stampede the buffaloes to trample Shere Khan to death. Mowgli leaves the village, and goes back to hunt with the wolves until he becomes a man.	"Mowgli's Song"	The story's title is taken from William Blake's 1794 poem "The Tyger".
The White Seal	Kotick, a rare white-furred fur seal, sees seals being killed by islanders in the Bering Sea. He decides to find a safe home for his people, and after several years of searching as he comes of age, eventually finds a suitable place. He returns home and persuades the other seals to follow him.	"Lukannon"	Many names in the story are Russian, as the Pribilof Islands had been bought by the United States in 1867, and Kipling had access to books about the islands.
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi	An English family have just moved to a house in India. They find Rikki-Tikki-Tavi the mongoose flooded out of his burrow. A pair of large cobras, Nag and Nagaina, attempt unsuccessfully to kill him. He hears the cobras plotting to kill the father in the house, and attacks Nag in the bathroom. The sound of the fight attracts the father, who shoots Nag. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi destroys Nagaina's eggs and chases her into her "rat-hole" where he kills her too.	"Darzee's Chaunt"	This story has been published as a short book.
Toomai of the Elephants	Big Toomai rides Kala Nag the elephant to catch wild elephants in the hills. His son Little Toomai comes to help and risks his life throwing a rope up to one of the drivers. His father forbids him to enter the elephant enclosure again "until he has seen the elephants dance". One night he follows the elephants walking without drivers out of the camp, and is picked up by Kala Nag; he rides into the elephants' meeting place in the jungle, where they dance. On his return he says "I've seen the elephants dance" and falls asleep from tiredness. The drivers follow the elephants' tracks into the forest and find a newly cleared glade, showing that Little Toomai has told the truth. When they come back, he is hailed by both hunters and elephants, and the oldest and wisest hunter says that when Little Toomai grows up, he'll be called Toomai of the Elephants like his grandfather.	"Shiv and the Grasshopper"	This story has been published as a short book, and was the basis of the 1937 film Elephant Boy.
Her Majesty's Servants	On the night before a British military parade for the Amir of Afghanistan, the army's working animals—mule, camel, horse, bullock, elephant—discuss what they do in battle and how they feel about their work. It is explained to the Afghans that men and animals obey the orders carried down from the Queen.	"Parade-Song of the Camp Animals" is set to the tunes of several well-known songs.

Characters

Many of the characters are named simply after the Hindustani names of their species: for example, Baloo is a transliteration of Hindustani भालू/بھالو Bhālū, "bear". The characters from "The White Seal" are transliterations from the Russian of the Pribilof Islands.

Akela * – a wolf
Bagheera * – a black panther
Baloo * – a bear
Bandar-log * – a tribe of monkeys
Chil * – a kite, in earlier editions called Rann
Chuchundra * – an Asian house shrew, called muskrat in the book
Darzee * – a tailorbird
Father Wolf – the father wolf who raised Mowgli as his own cub
Grey brother – one of Mother and Father Wolf's cubs
Hathi * – an Indian elephant
Ikki * – a porcupine
Kaa * – a python
Karait * – a krait
Kotick ^ – a white seal
Mang * – a bat
Mor * – an Indian peafowl
Mowgli – main character of the Mowgli stories, the young jungle boy
Nag * – a male cobra
Nagaina * – a female cobra, Nag's mate
Raksha – the Mother wolf who raised Mowgli as her own cub
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi – a mongoose
Sea Catch ^ – a seal and Kotick's father
Sea Cow – a sea cow
Sea Vitch ^ – a walrus
Shere Khan * – a tiger
Tabaqui * – a jackal