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The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling is a collection of stories, published between 1893 and 1894, where adventure, exoticism and friendship are central topics.
Mowgli the “man cub”, the black panther Bagheera and Baloo, a majestic and amiable bear, are the principal characters, famous and well known to readers of all ages.
Numerous are the film adaptations of the book. The most famous is the one by Walt Disney (1967).
Rudyard Kipling was born on 30 December 1865 in Bombay.
British writer and poet of Indian origins, in 1907 (when he was only 41 years old) Kipling received the Nobel Prize for Literature. His novels include: Captains Courageous, The Man Who Would Be King and Kim.
He died in London, the 18 January 1936.
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Introduction
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling is a collection of stories, published between 1893 and 1894, where adventure, exoticism and friendship are central topics.
Mowgli the “man cub”, the black panther Bagheera and Baloo, a majestic and amiable bear, are the principal characters, famous and well known to readers of all ages.
Numerous are the film adaptations of the book. The most famous is the one by Walt Disney (1967).
Rudyard Kipling was born on 30 December 1865 in Bombay.
British writer and poet of Indian origins, in 1907 (when he was only 41 years old) Kipling received the Nobel Prize for Literature. His novels include: Captains Courageous, The Man Who Would Be King and Kim.
He died in London, the 18 January 1936.
The Jungle Book
By
Rudyard Kipling
Mowgli’s Brothers
Now Rann the Kite brings home the night
That Mang the Bat sets free—
The herds are shut in byre and hut
For loosed till dawn are we.
This is the hour of pride and power,
Talon and tush and claw.
Oh, hear the call!—Good hunting all
That keep the Jungle Law!
Night-Song in the Jungle
It was seven o’clock of a very warm evening in the
Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day’s rest,
scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after
the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips.
Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her
four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into
the mouth of the cave where they all lived. ‘Augrh!’ said Father
Wolf. ‘It is time to hunt again.’ He was going to spring
down hill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the
threshold and whined: ‘Good luck go with you, O Chief of
the Wolves. And good luck and strong white teeth go with
noble children that they may never forget the hungry in this
world.’
It was the jackal—Tabaqui, the Dish-licker—and the
wolves of India despise Tabaqui because he runs about making
mischief, and telling tales, and eating rags and pieces of
leather from the village rubbish-heaps. But they are afraid
of him too, because Tabaqui, more than anyone else in the
jungle, is apt to go mad, and then he forgets that he was
ever afraid of anyone, and runs through the forest biting
everything in his way. Even the tiger runs and hides when
little Tabaqui goes mad, for madness is the most disgraceful
thing that can overtake a wild creature. We call it hydrophobia,
but they call it dewanee—the madness— and run.
‘Enter, then, and look,’ said Father Wolf stiffly, ‘but there
is no food here.’
‘For a wolf, no,’ said Tabaqui, ‘but for so mean a person
as myself a dry bone is a good feast. Who are we, the Gidurlog
[the jackal people], to pick and choose?’ He scuttled to
the back of the cave, where he found the bone of a buck with
some meat on it, and sat cracking the end merrily.
‘All thanks for this good meal,’ he said, licking his lips.
‘How beautiful are the noble children! How large are their
eyes! And so young too! Indeed, indeed, I might have remembered
that the children of kings are men from the
beginning.’
Now, Tabaqui knew as well as anyone else that there
is nothing so unlucky as to compliment children to their
faces. It pleased him to see Mother and Father Wolf look
uncomfortable.
Tabaqui sat still, rejoicing in the mischief that he had
made, and then he said spitefully:
‘Shere Khan, the Big One, has shifted his hunting
grounds. He will hunt among these hills for the next moon,
so he has told me.’
Shere Khan was the tiger who lived near the Waingunga
River, twenty miles away.
‘He has no right!’ Father Wolf began angrily—‘By the
Law of the Jungle he has no right to change his quarters
without due warning. He will frighten every head of game
within ten miles, and I—I have to kill for two, these days.’
‘His mother did not call him Lungri [the Lame One] for
nothing,’ said Mother Wolf quietly. ‘He has been lame in
one foot from his birth. That is why he has only killed cattle.
Now the villagers of the Waingunga are angry with him,
and he has come here to make our villagers angry. They will
scour the jungle for him when he is far away, and we and
our children must run when the grass is set alight. Indeed,
we are very grateful to Shere Khan!’
‘Shall I tell him of your gratitude?’ said Tabaqui.
‘Out!’ snapped Father Wolf. ‘Out and hunt with thy master.
Thou hast done harm enough for one night.’
‘I go,’ said Tabaqui quietly. ‘Ye can hear Shere Khan below
in the thickets. I might have saved myself the message.’
Father Wolf listened, and below in the valley that ran
down to a little river he heard the dry, angry, snarly, singsong
whine of a tiger who has caught nothing and does not
care if all the jungle knows it.
‘The fool!’ said Father Wolf. ‘To begin a night’s work
with that noise! Does he think that our buck are like his fat
Waingunga bullocks?’
‘H’sh. It is neither bullock nor buck he hunts to-night,’
said Mother Wolf. ‘It is Man.’
The whine had changed to a sort of humming purr that
seemed to come from every quarter of the compass. It was
the noise that bewilders woodcutters and gypsies sleeping
in the open, and makes them run sometimes into the very
mouth of the tiger.
‘Man!’ said Father Wolf, showing all his white teeth.
‘Faugh! Are there not enough beetles and frogs in the tanks
that he must eat Man, and on our ground too!’
The Law of the Jungle, which never orders anything without
a reason, forbids every beast to eat Man except when
he is killing to show his children how to kill, and then he
must hunt outside the hunting grounds of his pack or tribe.
The real reason for this is that man-killing means, sooner
or later, the arrival of white men on elephants, with guns,
and hundreds of brown men with gongs and rockets and
torches. Then everybody in the jungle suffers. The reason
the beasts give among themselves is that Man is the weakest
and most defenseless of all living things, and it is unsportsmanlike
to touch him. They say too—and it is true —that
man-eaters become mangy, and lose their teeth.
The purr grew louder, and ended in the full-throated
‘Aaarh!’ of the tiger’s charge.
Then there was a howl—an untigerish howl—from Shere
Khan. ‘He has missed,’ said Mother Wolf. ‘What is it?’
Father Wolf ran out a few paces and heard Shere Khan
muttering and mumbling savagely as he tumbled about in
the scrub.
‘The fool has had no more sense than to jump at a woodcutter’s
campfire, and has burned his feet,’ said Father Wolf
with a grunt. ‘Tabaqui is with him.’
‘Something is coming uphill,’ said Mother Wolf, twitching
one ear. ‘Get ready.’
The bushes rustled a little in the thicket, and Father Wolf
dropped with his haunches under him, ready for his leap.
Then, if you had been watching, you would have seen the
most wonderful thing in the world—the wolf checked in
mid-spring. He made his bound before he saw what it was
he was jumping at, and then he tried to stop himself. The result
was that he shot up straight into the air for four or five
feet, landing almost where he left ground.
‘Man!’ he snapped. ‘A man’s cub. Look!’
Directly in front of him, holding on by a low branch,
stood a naked brown baby who could just walk—as soft
and as dimpled a little atom as ever came to a wolf’s cave at
night. He looked up into Father Wolf’s face, and laughed.
‘Is that a man’s cub?’ said Mother Wolf. ‘I have never
seen one. Bring it here.’
A Wolf accustomed to moving his own cubs can, if necessary,
mouth an egg without breaking it, and though Father
Wolf’s jaws closed right on the child’s back not a tooth even
scratched the skin as he laid it down among the cubs.
‘How little! How naked, and—how bold!’ said Mother
Wolf softly. The baby was pushing his way between the cubs
to get close to the warm hide. ‘Ahai! He is taking his meal
with the others. And so this is a man’s cub. Now, was there
ever a wolf that could boast of a man’s cub among her children?’
‘I have heard now and again of such a thing, but never in
our Pack or in my time,’ said Father Wolf. ‘He is altogether
without hair, and I could kill him with a touch of my foot.
But see, he looks up and is not afraid.’
The moonlight was blocked out of the mouth of the cave,
for Shere Khan’s great square head and shoulders were
thrust into the entrance. Tabaqui, behind him, was squeaking:
‘My lord, my lord, it went in here!’
‘Shere Khan does us great honor,’ said Father Wolf, but
his eyes were very angry. ‘What does Shere Khan need?’
‘My quarry. A man’s cub went this way,’ said Shere Khan.
‘Its parents have run off. Give it to me.’
Shere Khan had jumped at a woodcutter’s campfire, as
Father Wolf had said, and was furious from the pain of his
burned feet. But Father Wolf knew that the mouth of the
cave was too narrow for a tiger to come in by. Even where
he was, Shere Khan’s shoulders and forepaws were cramped
for want of room, as a man’s would be if he tried to fight in
a barrel.
‘The Wolves are a free people,’ said Father Wolf. ‘They
take orders from the Head of the Pack, and not from any
striped cattle-killer. The man’s cub is ours—to kill if we
choose.’
‘Ye choose and ye do not choose! What talk is this of
choosing? By the bull that I killed, am I to stand nosing into
your dog’s den for my fair dues? It is I, Shere Khan, who
speak!’
The tiger’s roar filled the cave with thunder. Mother Wolf
shook herself clear of the cubs and sprang forward, her eyes,
like two green moons in the darkness, facing the blazing
eyes of Shere Khan.
‘And it is I, Raksha [The Demon], who answers. The man’s
cub is mine, Lungri—mine to me! He shall not be killed. He
shall live to run with the Pack and to hunt with the Pack;
and in the end, look you, hunter of little naked cubs—frogeater—
fish-killer—he shall hunt thee! Now get hence, or by
the Sambhur that I killed (I eat no starved cattle), back thou
goest to thy mother, burned beast of the jungle, lamer than
ever thou camest into the world! Go!’
Father Wolf looked on amazed. He had almost forgotten
the days when he won Mother Wolf in fair fight from
five other wolves, when she ran in the Pack and was not
called The Demon for compliment’s sake. Shere Khan might
have faced Father Wolf, but he could not stand up against
Mother Wolf, for he knew that where he was she had all the
advantage of the ground, and would fight to the death. So
he backed out of the cave mouth growling, and when he was
clear he shouted:
‘Each dog barks in his own yard! We will see what the
Pack will say to this fostering of man-cubs. The cub is mine,
and to my teeth he will come in the end, O bush-tailed
thieves!’
Mother Wolf threw herself down panting among the
cubs, and Father Wolf said to her gravely:
‘Shere Khan speaks this much truth. The cub must be
shown to the Pack. Wilt thou still keep him, Mother?’
‘Keep him!’ she gasped. ‘He came naked, by night, alone
and very hungry; yet he was not afraid! Look, he has pushed
one of my babes to one side already. And that lame butcher
would have killed him and would have run off to the Waingunga
while the villagers here hunted through all our lairs
in revenge! Keep him? Assuredly I will keep him. Lie still,
little frog. O thou Mowgli —for Mowgli the Frog I will call
thee—the time will come when thou wilt hunt Shere Khan
as he has hunted thee.’
‘But what will our Pack say?’ said Father Wolf.
The Law of the Jungle lays down very clearly that any
wolf may, when he marries, withdraw from the Pack he belongs
to. But as soon as his cubs are old enough to stand on
their feet he must bring them to the Pack Council, which
is generally held once a month at full moon, in order that
the other wolves may identify them. After that inspection
the cubs are free to run where they please, and until they
have killed their first buck no excuse is accepted if a grown
wolf of the Pack kills one of them. The punishment is death
where the murderer can be found; and if you think for a
minute you will see that this must be so.
Father Wolf waited till his cubs could run a little, and
then on the night of the Pack Meeting took them and Mowgli
and Mother Wolf to the Council Rock—a hilltop covered
with stones and boulders where a hundred wolves could
hide. Akela, the great gray Lone Wolf, who led all the Pack
by strength and cunning, lay out at full length on his rock,
and below him sat forty or more wolves of every size and
color, from badger-colored veterans who could handle a
buck alone to young black three-year-olds who thought they
could. The Lone Wolf had led them for a year now. He had
fallen twice into a wolf trap in his youth, and once he had
been beaten and left for dead; so he knew the manners and
customs of men. There was very little talking at the Rock.
The cubs tumbled over each other in the center of the circle
where their mothers and fathers sat, and now and again a
senior wolf would go quietly up to a cub, look at him carefully,
and return to his place on noiseless feet. Sometimes
a mother would push her cub far out into the moonlight
to be sure that he had not been overlooked. Akela from his
rock would cry: ‘Ye know the Law—ye know the Law. Look
well, O Wolves!’ And the anxious mothers would take up
the call: ‘Look—look well, O Wolves!’
At last—and Mother Wolf’s neck bristles lifted as the
time came—Father Wolf pushed ‘Mowgli the Frog,’ as they
called him, into the center, where he sat laughing and playing
with some pebbles that glistened in the moonlight.
Akela never raised his head from his paws, but went on
with the monotonous cry: ‘Look well!’ A muffled roar came
up from behind the rocks—the voice of Shere Khan crying:
‘The cub is mine. Give him to me. What have the Free
People to do with a man’s cub?’ Akela never even twitched
his ears. All he said was: ‘Look well, O Wolves! What have
the Free People to do with the orders of any save the Free
People? Look well!’
There was a chorus of deep growls, and a young wolf in
his fourth year flung back Shere Khan’s question to Akela:
‘What have the Free People to do with a man’s cub?’ Now,
the Law of the Jungle lays down that if there is any dispute
as to the right of a cub to be accepted by the Pack, he must
be spoken for by at least two members of the Pack who are
not his father and mother.
‘Who speaks for this cub?’ said Akela. ‘Among the Free
People who speaks?’ There was no answer and Mother Wolf
got ready for what she knew would be her last fight, if things
came to fighting.
Then the only other creature who is allowed at the Pack
Council—Baloo, the sleepy brown bear who teaches the
wolf cubs the Law of the Jungle: old Baloo, who can come
and go where he pleases because he eats only nuts and roots
and honey—rose upon his hind quarters and grunted.
‘The man’s cub—the man’s cub?’ he said. ‘I speak for the
man’s cub. There is no harm in a man’s cub. I have no gift of
words, but I speak the truth. Let him run with the Pack, and
be entered with the others. I myself will teach him.’
‘We need yet another,’ said Akela. ‘Baloo has spoken, and
he is our teacher for the young cubs. Who speaks besides
Baloo?’
A black shadow dropped down into the circle. It was Bagheera
the Black Panther, inky black all over, but with the
panther markings showing up in certain lights like the pattern
of watered silk. Everybody knew Bagheera, and nobody
cared to cross his path; for he was as cunning as Tabaqui,
as bold as the wild buffalo, and as reckless as the wounded
elephant. But he had a voice as soft as wild honey dripping
from a tree, and a skin softer than down.
‘O Akela, and ye the Free People,’ he purred, ‘I have no
right in your assembly, but the Law of the Jungle says that if
there is a doubt which is not a killing matter in regard to a
new cub, the life of that cub may be bought at a price. And
the Law does not say who may or may not pay that price.
Am I right?’
‘Good! Good!’ said the young wolves, who are always
hungry. ‘Listen to Bagheera. The cub can be bought for a
price. It is the Law.’
‘Knowing that I have no right to speak here, I ask your
leave.’
‘Speak then,’ cried twenty voices.
‘To kill a naked cub is shame. Besides, he may make better
sport for you when he is grown. Baloo has spoken in his
behalf. Now to Baloo’s word I will add one bull, and a fat
one, newly killed, not half a mile from here, if ye will accept
the man’s cub according to the Law. Is it difficult?’
There was a clamor of scores of voices, saying: ‘What
matter? He will die in the winter rains. He will scorch in the
sun. What harm can a naked frog do us? Let him run with
the Pack. Where is the bull, Bagheera? Let him be accepted.’
And then came Akela’s deep bay, crying: ‘Look well—look
well, O Wolves!’
Mowgli was still deeply interested in the pebbles, and he
did not notice when the wolves came and looked at him one
by one. At last they all went down the hill for the dead bull,
and only Akela, Bagheera, Baloo, and Mowgli’s own wolves
were left. Shere Khan roared still in the night, for he was
very angry that Mowgli had not been handed over to him.
‘Ay, roar well,’ said Bagheera, under his whiskers, ‘for the
time will come when this naked thing will make thee roar
to another tune, or I know nothing of man.’
‘It was well done,’ said Akela. ‘Men and their cubs are
very wise. He may be a help in time.’
‘Truly, a help in time of need; for none can hope to lead
the Pack forever,’ said Bagheera.
Akela said nothing. He was thinking of the time that
comes to every leader of every pack when his strength goes
from him and he gets feebler and feebler, till at last he is
killed by the wolves and a new leader comes up—to be
killed in his turn.
‘Take him away,’ he said to Father Wolf, ‘and train him as
befits one of the Free People.’
And that is how Mowgli was entered into the Seeonee
Wolf Pack for the price of a bull and on Baloo’s good word.
Now you must be content to skip ten or eleven whole
years, and only guess at all the wonderful life that Mowgli
led among the wolves, because if it were written out it
would fill ever so many books. He grew up with the cubs,
though they, of course, were grown wolves almost before
he was a child. And Father Wolf taught him his business,
and the meaning of things in the jungle, till every rustle in
the grass, every breath of the warm night air, every note of
the owls above his head, every scratch of a bat’s claws as it
roosted for a while in a tree, and every splash of every little
fish jumping in a pool meant just as much to him as the
work of his office means to a business man. When he was
not learning he sat out in the sun and slept, and ate and
went to sleep again. When he felt dirty or hot he swam in
the forest pools; and when he wanted honey (Baloo told him
that honey and nuts were just as pleasant to eat as raw meat)
he climbed up for it, and that Bagheera showed him how
to do. Bagheera would lie out on a branch and call, ‘Come
along, Little Brother,’ and at first Mowgli would cling like
the sloth, but afterward he would fling himself through the
branches almost as boldly as the gray ape. He took his place
at the Council Rock, too, when the Pack met, and there he
discovered that if he stared hard at any wolf, the wolf would
be forced to drop his eyes, and so he used to stare for fun.
At other times he would pick the long thorns out of the
pads of his friends, for wolves suffer terribly from thorns
and burs in their coats. He would go down the hillside into
the cultivated lands by night, and look very curiously at the
villagers in their huts, but he had a mistrust of men because
Bagheera showed him a square box with a drop gate so cunningly
hidden in the jungle that he nearly walked into it,
and told him that it was a trap. He loved better than anything
else to go with Bagheera into the dark warm heart of
the forest, to sleep all through the drowsy day, and at night
see how Bagheera did his killing. Bagheera killed right and
left as he felt hungry, and so did Mowgli—with one exception.
As soon as he was old enough to understand things,
Bagheera told him that he must never touch cattle because
he had been bought into the Pack at the price of a bull’s life.
‘All the jungle is thine,’ said Bagheera, ‘and thou canst kill
everything that thou art strong enough to kill; but for the
sake of the bull that bought thee thou must never kill or eat
any cattle young or old. That is the Law of the Jungle.’ Mowgli
obeyed faithfully.
And he grew and grew strong as a boy must grow who
does not know that he is learning any lessons, and who has
nothing in the world to think of except things to eat.
Mother Wolf told him once or twice that Shere Khan was
not a creature to be trusted, and that some day he must kill
Shere Khan. But though a young wolf would have remembered
that advice every hour, Mowgli forgot it because he
was only a boy—though he would have called himself a wolf
if he had been able to speak in any human tongue.
Shere Khan was always crossing his path in the jungle,
for as Akela grew older and feebler the lame tiger had come
to be great friends with the younger wolves of the Pack, who
followed him for scraps, a thing Akela would never have allowed
if he had dared to push his authority to the proper
bounds. Then Shere Khan would flatter them and wonder
that such fine young hunters were content to be led by a dying
wolf and a man’s cub. ‘They tell me,’ Shere Khan would
say, ‘that at Council ye dare not look him between the eyes.’
And the young wolves would growl and bristle.
Bagheera, who had eyes and ears everywhere, knew
something of this, and once or twice he told Mowgli in
so many words that Shere Khan would kill him some day.
Mowgli would laugh and answer: ‘I have the Pack and I have
thee; and Baloo, though he is so lazy, might strike a blow or
two for my sake. Why should I be afraid?’
It was one very warm day that a new notion came to Bagheera—
born of something that he had heard. Perhaps Ikki
the Porcupine had told him; but he said to Mowgli when
they were deep in the jungle, as the boy lay with his head on
Bagheera’s beautiful black skin, ‘Little Brother, how often
have I told thee that Shere Khan is thy enemy?’
‘As many times as there are nuts on that palm,’ said Mowgli,
who, naturally, could not count. ‘What of it? I am sleepy,
Bagheera, and Shere Khan is all long tail and loud talk—like
Mao, the Peacock.’
‘But this is no time for sleeping. Baloo knows it; I know
it; the Pack know it; and even the foolish, foolish deer know.
Tabaqui has told thee too.’
‘Ho! ho!’ said Mowgli. ‘Tabaqui came to me not long
ago with some rude talk that I was a naked man’s cub and
not fit to dig pig-nuts. But I caught Tabaqui by the tail and
swung him twice against a palm-tree to teach him better
manners.’
‘That was foolishness, for though Tabaqui is a mischiefmaker,
he would have told thee of something that concerned
thee closely. Open those eyes, Little Brother. Shere Khan
dare not kill thee in the jungle. But remember, Akela is very
old, and soon the day comes when he cannot kill his buck,
and then he will be leader no more. Many of the wolves
that looked thee over when thou wast brought to the Council
first are old too, and the young wolves believe, as Shere
Khan has taught them, that a man-cub has no place with
the Pack. In a little time thou wilt be a man.’
‘And what is a man that he should not run with his brothers?’
said Mowgli. ‘I was born in the jungle. I have obeyed
the Law of the Jungle, and there is no wolf of ours from
whose paws I have not pulled a thorn. Surely they are my
brothers!’
Bagheera stretched himself at full length and half shut
his eyes. ‘Little Brother,’ said he, ‘feel under my jaw.’
Mowgli put up his strong brown hand, and just under
Bagheera’s silky chin, where the giant rolling muscles were
all hid by the glossy hair, he came upon a little bald spot.
‘There is no one in the jungle that knows that I, Bagheera,
carry that mark—the mark of the collar; and yet,
Little Brother, I was born among men, and it was among
men that my mother died—in the cages of the king’s palace
at Oodeypore. It was because of this that I paid the price
for thee at the Council when thou wast a little naked cub.
Yes, I too was born among men. I had never seen the jungle.
They fed me behind bars from an iron pan till one night I
felt that I was Bagheera—the Panther— and no man’s plaything,
and I broke the silly lock with one blow of my paw
and came away. And because I had learned the ways of men,
I became more terrible in the jungle than Shere Khan. Is it
not so?’
‘Yes,’ said Mowgli, ‘all the jungle fear Bagheera—all except
Mowgli.’
‘Oh, thou art a man’s cub,’ said the Black Panther very
tenderly. ‘And even as I returned to my jungle, so thou must
go back to men at last—to the men who are thy brothers—if
thou art not killed in the Council.’
‘But why—but why should any wish to kill me?’ said
Mowgli.
‘Look at me,’ said Bagheera. And Mowgli looked at him
steadily between the eyes. The big panther turned his head
away in half a minute.
‘That is why,’ he said, shifting his paw on the leaves. ‘Not
even I can look thee between the eyes, and I was born among
men, and I love thee, Little Brother. The others they hate
thee because their eyes cannot meet thine; because thou art
wise; because thou hast pulled out thorns from their feet—
because thou art a man.’
‘I did not know these things,’ said Mowgli sullenly, and
he frowned under his heavy black eyebrows.
‘What is the Law of the Jungle? Strike first and then give
tongue. By thy very carelessness they know that thou art a
man. But be wise. It is in my heart that when Akela misses
his next kill—and at each hunt it costs him more to pin
the buck—the Pack will turn against him and against thee.
They will hold a jungle Council at the Rock, and then—and
then—I have it!’ said Bagheera, leaping up. ‘Go thou down
quickly to the men’s huts in the valley, and take some of the
Red Flower which they grow there, so that when the time
comes thou mayest have even a stronger friend than I or Baloo
or those of the Pack that love thee. Get the Red Flower.’
By Red Flower Bagheera meant fire, only no creature in
the jungle will call fire by its proper name. Every beast lives
in deadly fear [...]