The Jungle Book

The Jungle Book

Embossed cover from the original edition of The Jungle Book based on art by John Lockwood Kipling
Author	Rudyard Kipling
Illustrator	John Lockwood Kipling (Rudyard's father)
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Series	The Jungle Books
Genre	Children's book
Publisher	Macmillan Publishers
Publication date	1894
Preceded by	"In the Rukh"
Followed by	The Second Jungle Book

The Jungle Book (1894) is a collection of stories by English author Rudyard Kipling. The stories were first published in magazines in 1893–94. The original publications contain illustrations, some by the author'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-a-half years. These stories were written when Kipling lived in Naulakha, the home he built in Dummerston, Vermont (just north of Brattleboro), in the United States.^[1] There is evidence that the collection of stories was written for his daughter Josephine, who died in 1899 at six years of age; a rare first edition of the book with a poignant handwritten note by the author to his young daughter was discovered at the National Trust's Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire in 2010.^[2]

The tales in the book (as well as 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."^[3] Other readers have interpreted the work as allegories of the politics and society of the time.^[4] The best-known of them are the three stories revolving around the adventures of Mowgli, an abandoned "man cub" who is raised by wolves in the Indian jungle. The most famous of the other four 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 followed by a piece of verse.

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 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. Each of the even-numbered items below is an epigrammatic poem related to the preceding story.

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, the hero's name "Kotick" (Котик) is an affectionate diminutive of "cat" (Кот); "Stareek!" (Старик!) means "old man!"; "Ochen scoochnie", said by Kotick to mean "I am very lonesome", is the phonetic pronunciation of Очень скучный, which actually means "very boring". Likewise, "holluschick" (plural -ie) is "холостяк", (pl. -и) which means "bachelor" and is used in the story for "unmarried" young adult seals.
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 Chaunt".
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 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
• Hathi – An Indian elephant
• Ikki – An Asiatic brush-tailed porcupine (mentioned only)
• Kaa – An Indian python
• Karait – A 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
• Pappu - A cat
• 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 edited or adapted for younger readers, and there have been several comic book adaptations:

• 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 civilised 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.^[5]
• 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.
• Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book 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 directly linked back to Kipling, but with Gaiman's dark twist. Mr. Gaiman has spoken in some detail about this on his website.^[6]

Several films were created based on Kipling's stories:

• Elephant Boy (1937) – directed by Robert J. Flaherty and Zoltan Korda, based on the "Toomai of the Elephants".
• Jungle Book (1942) – directed by Zoltán Korda, starring Sabu Dastagir as Mowgli.
• Walt Disney Animation Studios' 1967 animated film version, inspired by the Mowgli stories, was extremely popular, though it took great liberties with the plot, characters and the pronunciation of the characters' names. These characterisations were further used in the 1990 animated series TaleSpin, which featured several anthropomorphic characters loosely based on those from the film in a comic aviation-industry setting. After the film's success, DisneyToon Studios later produced a theatrical sequel, The Jungle Book 2, in 2003.

Heroes of the Soviet animation film on a postal stamp of Russia

• In 1967, another animated adaptation was released in the Soviet Union called Mowgli (Russian: Маугли; published as Adventures of Mowgli in the US), also known as the 'heroic' version of the story. Five animated shorts of about 20 minutes each were released between 1967 and 1971, and combined into a single 96-minute feature film in 1973. It's also very close to the book's storyline, and one of the few adaptations which has Bagheera as a female panther. It also features stories from The Second Jungle Book, such as Red Dog and a simplified version of The King's Ankus.
• Chuck Jones's made for-TV cartoons Mowgli's Brothers, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and The White Seal stick to the original storylines more closely than most adaptations.^[7][8][9]
• There was a Japanese anime television series called Jungle Book Shonen Mowgli broadcast in 1989. Its adaptation represents a compromise between the original stories and the Walt Disney version. Many of Kipling's stories are adapted into the series, but many elements are combined and changed to suit more modern sensibilities. For instance, Akela, the wolf pack alpha eventually steps aside, but instead of being threatened with death, he stays on as the new leader's advisor. Also, there is an Indian family in the series which includes Rikki-Tikki-Tavi as a pet mongoose. Finally at the series' conclusion, Mowgli leaves the jungle for human civilisation, but still keeps strong ties with his animal friends.
• Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (1994) – starring Jason Scott Lee as Mowgli. The second Jungle Book film produced by Disney.
• The Second Jungle Book: Mowgli and Baloo (1997) – starring Jamie Williams as Mowgli.
• The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story (1998) – starring Brandon Baker as Mowgli.
• Mowgli: The New Adventures of the Jungle Book (1998) – a live-action television series starring Sean Price-McConnell as Mowgli.
• The Jungle Book, a BBC adaptation began production in September 2007 and continued for two years.^[10]
• Walt Disney Pictures developed a live-action/CGI adaptation with Justin Marks penning the screenplay and Jon Favreau directing the film, which was released on 15 April 2016. The film's cast includes Neel Sethi as Mowgli, Bill Murray as Baloo, Idris Elba as Shere Khan, Ben Kingsley as Bagheera, Christopher Walken as King Louie, Giancarlo Esposito as Akela, Scarlett Johansson as Kaa and Lupita Nyong'o as Raksha.
• Warner Bros. is also developing a live-action version titled Jungle Book, with Steve Kloves writing and Andy Serkis set to direct. Serkis will also be providing the voice of Baloo. The film will be released on 19 October 2018. The film's cast includes Benedict Cumberbatch as Shere Khan, Christian Bale as Bagheera, Cate Blanchett as Kaa, Naomie Harris as Raksha, Tom Hollander as Tabaqui, Eddie Marsan as Papa Wolf, Peter Mullan as Akela, and Rohan Chand as Mowgli.

Other adaptations include:

• Australian composer Percy Grainger, an avid Kipling reader wrote a Jungle Book cycle, which was published in 1958.
• 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.^[11]
• In 2006 the Orlando Shakespeare Theater commissioned a unique adaptation for their Theater For Young Audiences series.
• A new adaptation written by Leonard Joseph Dunham was premiered by the Hunger Artists Theatre Company in Fullerton, California, on 12 September 2008.^[12]
• A 2008 BBC Radio adaptation, directed by Chris Wallis and starring Nisha K. Nayar as Mowgli, Eartha Kitt as Kaa, Freddie Jones as Baloo and Jonathan Hyde as Bagheera, with music by John Mayer.^[13][14]

Controversies

A letter written and signed by Rudyard Kipling in 1895 was put up for auction in 2013 by Andrusier. In this letter, 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," Kipling wrote in the letter. "In fact, it is extremely possible that I have helped myself promiscuously but at present cannot remember from whose stories I have stolen."^[15]

See also

• Just So Stories
• Works of Rudyard Kipling
• The Jungle Book characters
• The Third Jungle Book
• Feral children in mythology and fiction
• Pench National Park, near Seoni (Seeonee) is said to be the forest where the Seeonee wolf pack lives.

References

1. Rao, K. Bhaskara (1967) Rudyard Kipling's India. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press
2. "Kipling first edition with author's poignant note found". BBC News. Retrieved 26 February 2013
3. The Long Recessional: the Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling, David Gilmour, Pimlico, 2003 ISBN 0-7126-6518-8
4. Hjejle, Benedicte 1983 'Kipling, Britisk Indien og Mowglihistorieine', Feitskrifi til Kristof Glamann, edited by Ole Fddbek and Niels Thomson. Odense, Denmark: Odense Universitetsforlag. pp. 87–114.
5. Superman Annual No.6 (1994)
6. Neil Gaiman's Journal, 13 February 2008
7. "The White Seal (TV 1975) – IMDB". Retrieved 12 April 2013.
8. "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (TV 1975) – IMDB". Retrieved 12 April 2013.
9. "Mowgli's Brothers (TV 1976) – IMDB". Retrieved 12 April 2013.
10. "BBC, Pathe team for 'Jungle Book' – Entertainment News, Film News, Media – Variety". Variety.
11. Stuart Paterson – complete guide to the Playwright and Plays
12. Hunger Artists – Show Archives
13. "BBC Radio 4 Extra - Rudyard Kipling - The Jungle Book - Episode guide". Bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2014-08-02.
14. "Radio". Nishanayar.com. Retrieved 2014-08-02.
15. Flood, Alison (31 May 2013). "Rudyard Kipling 'admitted to plagiarism in Jungle Book'". The Guardian (London). Retrieved 31 May 2013.

External links

• The Jungle Book Collection: a website demonstrating the variety of merchandise related to the book and film versions of The Jungle Book.
• The Jungle Book at Project Gutenberg
• The Jungle Book public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• Boom Kat Dance: a website describing the dance adaptation of The Jungle Book by Boom Kat Dance Company.