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= The_Jungle_Book =
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Introduction
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'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" (Seoni), 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
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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 (who died from pneumonia in 1899,
aged 6); 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.
Description
=============
The tales in the book (as well as those in 'The Second Jungle Book',
which followed in 1895 and includes eight further stories, including
five about Mowgli) 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 (Southern) 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.
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" (Seoni, in the central Indian
state of Madhya Pradesh) 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 (northwestern India) in an early
manuscript, later changed to Seonee, and Bagheera treks from
"Oodeypore" (Udaipur), 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
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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'. "The tiger's
roar filled the cave with thunder". 1894
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 (with
Alaska) by the United States in 1867, and Kipling had access to books
about the islands. The White Seal, 1894
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" (which no man ever did). 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'. Toomai at the elephant camp, 1894
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. "'Anybody can be forgiven for being scared in
the night'", said the Troop-Horse. 1894
Characters
============
Many of the characters (marked *) are named simply after the
Hindustani names of their species: for example, Baloo is a
transliteration of Hindustani भालू/بھالو Bhālū, "bear". The characters
(marked ^) 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 (रण Raṇ, "battle")
* 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
* 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 (Steller's) sea cow
* Sea Vitch ^ - a walrus
* Shere Khan * - a tiger
* Tabaqui * - a jackal
Illustrations
===============
The early editions were illustrated with drawings in the text by John
Lockwood Kipling (Rudyard's father), and the American artists W. H.
Drake and Paul Frenzeny.
Editions and translations
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The book has appeared in over 500 print editions, and over 100
audiobooks. It has been translated into at least 36 languages. In
2024, page proofs of the book were donated to Cambridge University
Library.
Abandonment and fostering
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Critics such as Harry Ricketts have observed that Kipling returns
repeatedly to the theme of the abandoned and fostered child, recalling
his own childhood feelings of abandonment. In his view, the enemy,
Shere Khan, represents the "malevolent would-be foster-parent" who
Mowgli in the end outwits and destroys, just as Kipling as a boy had
to face Mrs Holloway in place of his parents. Ricketts writes that in
"Mowgli's Brothers", the hero loses his human parents at the outset,
and his wolf fosterers at the conclusion; and Mowgli is again rejected
at the end of "Tiger! Tiger!", but each time is compensated by "a
queue of would-be foster-parents" including the wolves, Baloo,
Bagheera and Kaa. In Ricketts's view, the power that Mowgli has over
all these characters who compete for his affection is part of the
book's appeal to children. The historian of India Philip Mason
similarly emphasises the Mowgli myth, where the fostered hero, "the
odd man out among wolves and men alike", eventually triumphs over his
enemies. Mason notes that both Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and The White Seal do
much the same.
Law and freedom
=================
The novelist Marghanita Laski argued that the purpose of the stories
was not to teach about animals but to create human archetypes through
the animal characters, with lessons of respect for authority. She
noted that Kipling was a friend of the founder of the Scout Movement,
Robert Baden-Powell, who based the junior scout "Wolf Cubs" on the
stories, and that Kipling admired the movement. Ricketts wrote that
Kipling was obsessed by rules, a theme running throughout the stories
and named explicitly as "the law of the jungle". Part of this,
Ricketts supposed, was Mrs Holloway's evangelicalism, suitably
transformed. The rules required obedience and "knowing your place",
but also provided social relationships and "freedom to move between
different worlds". Sandra Kemp observed that the law may be highly
codified, but that the energies are also lawless, embodying the part
of human nature which is "floating, irresponsible and self-absorbed".
There is a duality between the two worlds of the village and the
jungle, but Mowgli, like Mang the bat, can travel between the two.
The novelist and critic Angus Wilson noted that Kipling's law of the
jungle was "far from Darwinian", since no attacks were allowed at the
water-hole when in drought. In Wilson's view, the popularity of the
Mowgli stories is thus not literary but moral: the animals can follow
the law easily, but Mowgli has human joys and sorrows, and the burden
of making decisions. Kipling's biographer, Charles Carrington, argued
that the "fables" about Mowgli illustrate truths directly, as
successful fables do, through the character of Mowgli himself; through
his "kindly mentors", Bagheera and Baloo; through the repeated failure
of the "bully" Shere Khan; through the endless but useless talk of the
Bandar-log; and through the law, which makes the jungle "an integrated
whole" while enabling Mowgli's brothers to live as the "Free People".
The academic Jan Montefiore commented on the book's balance of law and
freedom that "you don't need to invoke Jacqueline Rose on the adult's
dream of the child's innocence or Perry Nodelman's theory of
children's literature colonising its readers' minds with a double
fantasy of the child as both noble savage and embryo good citizen, to
see that the 'Jungle Books' .. give their readers a vicarious
experience of adventure both as freedom and as service to a just
State".
Reception
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Sayan Mukherjee, writing for the Book Review Circle, calls 'The Jungle
Book' "one of the most enjoyable books of my childhood and even in
adulthood, highly informative as to the outlook of the British on
their 'native population'".
The academic Jopi Nyman argued in 2001 that the book formed part of
the construction of "colonial English national identity" within
Kipling's "imperial project". In Nyman's view, nation, race and class
are mapped out in the stories, contributing to "an imagining of
Englishness" as a site of power and racial superiority. Nyman
suggested that 'The Jungle Books monkeys and snakes represent
"colonial animals" and "racialized Others" within the Indian jungle,
whereas the White Seal promotes "'truly English' identities in the
nationalist allegory" of that story.
Swati Singh, in his 'Secret History of the Jungle Book', notes that
the tone is like that of Indian folklore, fable-like, and that critics
have speculated that the Kipling may have heard similar stories from
his Hindu bearer and his Portuguese 'ayah' (nanny) during his
childhood in India. Singh observes, too, that Kipling wove "magic and
fantasy" into the stories for his daughter Josephine, and that even
critics reading Kipling for signs of imperialism could not help
admiring the power of his storytelling.
'The Jungle Book' 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 at the request 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 cities. Akela, the head wolf in 'The Jungle
Book', has become a senior figure in the movement; the name is
traditionally adopted by the leader of each Cub Scout pack.
Adaptations
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'The Jungle Book' has been adapted many times in a wide variety of
media. In literature, Robert Heinlein wrote the Hugo Award-winning
science fiction novel, 'Stranger in a Strange Land' (1961), when his
wife, Virginia, suggested a new version of 'The Jungle Book', but with
a child raised by Martians instead of wolves. Neil Gaiman's 'The
Graveyard Book' (2008) is inspired by 'The Jungle Book'. It follows a
baby boy who is found and brought up by the dead in a cemetery. It has
many scenes that can be traced to Kipling, but with Gaiman's dark
twist.
In music, the 'Jungle Book' cycle (1958) was written by the Australian
composer Percy Grainger, an avid Kipling reader. It consists of
quotations from the book, set as choral pieces and solos for soprano,
tenor or baritone. The French composer Charles Koechlin wrote several
symphonic works inspired by the book.
BBC Radio broadcast an adaptation on 14 February 1994 and released it
as a BBC audiobook in 2008. It was directed by Chris Wallis with Nisha
K. Nayar as Mowgli, Eartha Kitt as Kaa, Freddie Jones as Baloo, and
Jonathan Hyde as Bagheera. The music was by John Mayer.
The book's text has been adapted for younger readers with comic book
adaptations such as DC Comics Elseworlds' story, "Superman: The Feral
Man of Steel", in which an infant Superman is raised by wolves, while
Bagheera, Akela, and Shere Khan make appearances. Marvel Comics
published several adaptations by Mary Jo Duffy and Gil Kane in the
pages of 'Marvel Fanfare' (vol. 1). These were collected in the
one-shot 'Marvel Illustrated: The Jungle Book' (2007). Bill
Willingham's comic book series, 'Fables', features 'The Jungle Book's'
Mowgli, Bagheera, and Shere Khan.
'Manga Classics: The Jungle Book' was published by UDON
Entertainment's Manga Classics imprint in June 2017.
Many films have been based on one or another of Kipling's stories,
including 'Elephant Boy' (1937), Chuck Jones's made for-TV cartoons
'Rikki-Tikki-Tavi' (1975), 'The White Seal' (1975), and 'Mowgli's
Brothers' (1976). Many films, too, have been made of the book as a
whole, such as Zoltán Korda's 1942 film, Disney's 1967 animated film
and its 2016 remake. Other adaptations include the Russian adaptation
named 'Mowgli', published as 'Adventures of Mowgli' in the US, an
animation released between 1967 and 1971, and combined into a single
96-minute feature film in 1973, and the 1989 Italian-Japanese anime
'The Jungle Book: Adventures of Mowgli'.
Stuart Paterson wrote a stage adaptation in 2004, first produced by
the Birmingham Old Rep in 2004 and published in 2007 by Nick Hern
Books.
In 2021 BBC Radio 4 broadcast an adaptation by Ayeesha Menon which
resets the story as a "gangland coming-of-age fable" in modern India.
See also
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* Feral children in mythology and fiction
* Sher Shah Suri
External links
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*
* [
https://archive.org/details/junglebook00kipl2 1910 edition at
Archive.org]
*
*
License
=========
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Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle_Book
