The Jungle Book

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The Jungle Book

The Jungle Book

Embossed cover from the original edition of The Jungle Book based on art by John Lockwood Kipling
Author(s)

Rudyard Kipling

Illustrator

John Lockwood Kipling (Rudyard's father)

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Series

The Jungle Books

Genre(s)

Children's book

Publisher

Macmillan Publishers

Publication date

1894

Media type

Print (hardback & paperback)

ISBN

NA

Preceded by

"In the Rukh"

Followed by

The Second Jungle Book

The Jungle Book (1894) is a collection of stories by British Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling. The stories were first
published in magazines in 18934. The original publications contain illustrations, some by Rudyard's father, John
Lockwood Kipling. Kipling was born in India and spent the first six years of his childhood there. After about ten
years in England, he went back to India and worked there for about six-and-half years. These stories were written
when Kipling lived in Vermont.[1]
The tales in the book (and also those in The Second Jungle Book which followed in 1895, and which includes five
further stories about Mowgli) are fables, using animals in an anthropomorphic manner to give 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."[2] Other readers have
interpreted the work as allegories of the politics and society of the time.[3] The best-known of them are the three
stories revolving around the adventures of an abandoned "man cub" Mowgli who is raised by wolves in the Indian
jungle. The most famous of the other stories are probably "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi", the story of a heroic mongoose, and
"Toomai of the Elephants", the tale of a young elephant-handler. As with much of Kipling's work, each of the stories
is preceded by a piece of verse, and succeeded by another.
The Jungle Book, because of its moral tone, came to be used as a motivational book by the Cub Scouts, a junior
element of the Scouting movement. This use of the book's universe was approved by Kipling after a direct petition of
Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouting movement, who had originally asked for the author's permission for
the use of the Memory Game from Kim in his scheme to develop the morale and fitness of working-class youths in

The Jungle Book

cities. Akela, the head wolf in The Jungle Book, has become a senior figure in the movement, the name being
traditionally adopted by the leader of each Cub Scout pack.

Chapters
The complete book, having passed into the public domain, is on-line at Project Gutenberg's official website and
elsewhere.
1. "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, and then has to fight the tiger Shere Khan. This story has also been published as a
short book in its own right: Night-Song in the Jungle
2. "Hunting-Song of the Seeonee Pack"
3. "Kaa's Hunting": This story takes place before Mowgli fights Shere Khan. When Mowgli is abducted by
monkeys, Baloo and Bagheera set out to rescue him with the aid of Chil the Kite and Kaa the python. Maxims of
Baloo.
4. "Road Song of the Bandar-Log"
5. "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 Nathoo. But he has trouble adjusting to human life, and Shere Khan still wants to kill
him. The story's title is taken from the poem "The Tyger" by William Blake.
6. "Mowgli's Song"
7. "The White Seal": Kotick, a rare white-furred Northern fur seal, searches for a new home for his people, where
they will not be hunted by humans. The "animal language" words and names in this story are a phonetic spelling
of Russian spoken with an Aleut accent, for example "Stareek!" (= !) = "old man!", "Ochen scoochnie"
(said by Kotick) = "I am very lonesome" = (correctly means "very boring"), holluschick (plural
-i.e.) "bachelor male seal" () from = "unmarried".
8. "Lukannon"
9. "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi": Rikki-Tikki the mongoose defends a human family living in India against a pair of cobras.
This story has also been published as a short book.
10. "Darzee's Chant"
11. "Toomai of the Elephants": Toomai, a ten-year old boy who helps to tend working elephants, is told that he will
never be a full-fledged elephant-handler until he has seen the elephants dance. This story has also been published
as a short book.
12. "Shiv and the Grasshopper"
13. "Her Majesty's Servants" (originally titled "Servants of the Queen"): On the night before a military parade a
British soldier eavesdrops on a conversation between the camp animals.
14. "Parade-Song of the Camp Animals" parodies several well-known songs and poems, including Bonnie Dundee.

Characters
In alphabetical order:

Akela An Indian Wolf

Bagheera A melanistic (black) panther
Baloo A Sloth Bear
Bandar-log A tribe of monkeys
Chil A kite (renamed "Rann" in US editions)
Chuchundra A Muskrat

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

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The Jungle Book

Hathi An Indian Elephant

Ikki An Asiatic Brush-tailed Porcupine (mentioned only)
Kaa Indian Python
Karait Common Krait
Kotick A White Seal
Mang A Bat
Mor An Indian Peafowl
Mowgli Main character, the young jungle boy
Nag A male Black cobra
Nagaina A female King cobra, Nag's mate
Raksha The Mother wolf who raised Mowgli as her own cub
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi An Indian Mongoose
Sea Catch A Northern fur seal and Kotick's father
Sea Cow A Steller's Sea Cow
Sea Vitch A Walrus
Shere Khan A Royal Bengal Tiger
Tabaqui An Indian Jackal

Adaptations
The book's text has often been abridged or adapted for younger readers, and there have also been several comic book
adaptations.

Comics
A comic book series Petit d'homme ("Man Cub") was published in Belgium between 1996 and 2003. Written by
Crisse and drawn by Marc N'Guessan and Guy Michel, it resets the stories in a post-apocalyptic world in which
Mowgli's friends are humans rather than animals: Baloo is an elderly doctor, Bagheera is a fierce African woman
warrior and Kaa is a former army sniper.
Marvel Comics published several Jungle Book adaptations by Mary Jo Duffy and Gil Kane in the pages of Marvel
Fanfare (vol. 1). These strips were collected in the 2007 one-shot Marvel Illustrated: The Jungle Book.
The DC Comics Elseworlds' story, "Superman: The Feral Man of Steel", is based loosely on the Jungle Book
stories, as well as the Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan stories. The infant Superman, like Mowgli, is raised by
wolves, and takes the name K'l'l. Bagheera, Akela, and Shere Khan all make appearances. The character is later
given the civilized name of 'Clark' by Lois Lane, and is captured along with his friends, and used for profit by Lex
Luthor, who is also eventually slain.[4]
Bill Willingham's Eisner Award-winning comic book series Fables, published by Vertigo Comics, features the
Jungle Book's Mowgli, Bagheera and Shere Khan; though their characterisation remains true to Kipling's stories,
Willingham and artist Mark Buckingham also make oblique references to the 1967 Disney animation in dialogue
and artwork. The series amalgamates characters from fairy tales and folklore, as well as children's literature;
Shere Kahn, for instance, is shot dead by Snow White, whilst Mowgli is employed as a spy by Big Bad Wolf.

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