Kipling-The Jungle Book (1894) - Chapter 1 Mowgli's Brothers

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 tooand 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 tigers charge.
Then there was a howlan untigerish howlfrom 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 woodcutters 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 worldthe 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 mans cub. Look!
Directly in front of him, holding on by a low branch, stood a naked brown baby who could just
walkas soft and as dimpled a little atom as ever came to a wolfs cave at night. He looked up into
Father Wolfs face, and laughed.
Is that a mans 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 Wolfs jaws closed right on the childs back not a tooth even scratched the skin
as he laid it down among the cubs.
How little! How naked, andhow 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 mans cub. Now, was there ever a wolf that could boast of a mans 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 Khans great square head and
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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 mans cub went this way, said Shere Khan. "Its parents have run off. Give it to me.
Shere Khan had jumped at a woodcutters 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 Khans shoulders and forepaws were cramped for
want of room, as a mans 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 mans cub is oursto 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 dogs den for my fair dues? It is I, Shere Khan, who speak!
Vocabulary
Faugh: An exclamation of contempt, disgust, or abhorrence.
Unsportsmanlike: unsporting behaviour, or ungentlemanly conduct; term used in many professional
sports to refer to a particular player or team who has acted inappropriately and/or unprofessionally
in the context of the game.
Mangy: having a dirty or shabby appearance (wearing worn-out clothing and perceived as being
unappealing to the eye).
Purr: characteristic soft low murmuring noise that a cat makes when it seems to be contented.
Howl: whining sound.
Untigerish: unworthy of a tiger.
Scrub: a tree or bush.
With a grunt: with a half-nasal, half-throaty noise.
Dimpled: chubby.
Quarry: hunted animal.
Characters
Mowgli is featured prominently in first three of the Jungle Book's stories: "Mowgli's Brothers,"
"Kaa's Hunting," and "Tiger Tiger." The reader first meets him as a small naked boy, just old
enough to have learned to walk. He has wandered away from the village and is found by Mother
and Father wolf, just in time to avoid being eaten by Shere Khan, the conniving, lame tiger. He is
taken in by the wolf family and is raised by them and the wolf pack until he is a young man. He is
sponsored by Baloo, the bear, and Bagheera, the black panther, and from them he learns all about
the ways of the jungle. He learns how to hunt, how to converse in the different animal languages,
survival techniques, and all about jungle etiquette.
Shere Khan is a fictional tiger of the South Asian jungle, named after a Pashtun Prince (Sher Shah
Suri, The Lion King or The Tiger King) Kipling encountered on his trips to Afghanistan. The word
Shere translates to "Tiger" in Urdu/Hindi. Shere Khan is the chief antagonist in two of Rudyard
Kipling's Jungle Book stories featuring Mowgli. Despite being born with a crippled leg and
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derisively nicknamed Lungri (The Lame One) by his own mother, Shere Khan is arrogant and
regards himself as the rightful lord of the jungle. It seems, however, that the only creature who
looks up to him is Tabaqui, the cowardly, despised golden jackal.
Raksha the Demon (or Mother Wolf as initially named) is a fictional character featured in Rudyard
Kipling's Mowgli stories, collected in The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book. She is a
female Indian Wolf, member of the Seeonee pack, who while suckling her own cubs decides also to
adopt a human "cub" that her mate Father Wolf has found wandering in the jungle, naming him
"Mowgli" (which means "frog" in the Speech of the Jungle) because of his hairlessness. Defying the
tiger Shere Khan, who is determined to eat the man-cub, she reveals that her name is Raksha (which
means "protection") because of her ferocity as a fighter, and she will fight to the death for any of her
cubs, natural or adopted.
Father Wolf investigates a noise outside the cave den where his mate Raksha (Mother Wolf) is
suckling her cubs. Instead of the tiger Shere Khan, he is startled to see a naked human baby
emerging from the bush. At Raksha's request he brings the "man's cub" to her and she decides to
adopt him and name him Mowgli. Father Wolf plays very little part in the stories after this. He dies
at about the same time as Raksha, when Mowgli is about 14 years old, and Mowgli mourns them
and seals their bodies in their cave.
Bagheera the black-toned Indian Leopard is an animal fictional character. The word Bagh means
tiger in Hindi. Bagheera buys Mowgli's life with a freshly-killed bull and helps to raise him as one
of the pack. Because his life has been bought by a bull, Mowgli is forbidden to eat cattle. None but
Mowgli ever learn that Bagheera once wore a collar and chain, explaining his special insight
concerning Men.
Baloo the sleepy brown bear teaches the cubs of the Seeonee wolf pack the Law of the Jungle. His
most challenging pupil is the "man-cub" Mowgli.
Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1968-1936)
English short-story writer, poet, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British
imperialism, his tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. He received
the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907.
Kipling's father, John Lockwood Kipling, was an artist and scholar who had considerable influence
on his son's work, became curator of the Lahore museum, and is described presiding over this
wonder house in the first chapter of Kim, Rudyard's most famous novel. His mother was Alice
Macdonald, two of whose sisters married the highly successful 19th-century painters Sir Edward
Burne-Jones and Sir Edward Poynter, while a third married Alfred Baldwin and became the mother
of Stanley Baldwin, later prime minister. These connections were of lifelong importance to Kipling.
Much of his childhood was unhappy. Kipling was taken to England by his parents at the age of six
and was left for five years at a foster home at Southsea. Kipling returned to India in 1882 and
worked for seven years as a journalist. His parents, although not officially important, belonged to
the highest Anglo-Indian society, and Rudyard thus had opportunities for exploring the whole range
of that life. All the while he had remained keenly observant of the thronging spectacle of native
India, which had engaged his interest and affection from earliest childhood.
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In 1892 Kipling married Caroline Balestier, the sister of Wolcott Balestier, an American publisher
and writer with whom he had collaborated in The Naulahka (1892). That year the young couple
moved to the United States and settled on Mrs. Kipling's property in Vermont, but their manners and
attitudes were considered objectionable by their neighbours. Unable or unwilling to adjust to life in
America, the Kiplings returned to England in 1896. Besides numerous short-story collections and
poetry collections such as The Seven Seas (1896), Kipling published his best-known novels in the
1890s and immediately thereafter. His novel The Light That Failed (1890) is the story of a painter
going blind and spurned by the woman he loves. Captains Courageous (1897), in spite of its sense
of adventure, is often considered a poor novel because of the excessive descriptive writing. Kim
(1901), although essentially a children's book, must be considered a classic. The Jungle Books
(1894 and 1895) is a stylistically superb collection of stories linked by poems for children. These
books give further proof that Kipling excelled at telling a story but was inconsistent in producing
balanced, cohesive novels.
In 1907 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first Englishman to be so honoured. In South
Africa, where he spent much time, he was given a house by Cecil Rhodes, the diamond magnate
and South African statesman. This association fostered Kipling's imperialist persuasions, which
were to grow stronger with the years. These convictions are not to be dismissed in a word; they
were bound up with a genuine sense of a civilizing mission that required every Englishman, or,
more broadly, every white man, to bring European culture to the heathen natives of the uncivilized
world. Kipling's poems and stories were extraordinarily popular in the late 19th and early 20th
century, but after World War I his reputation as a serious writer suffered through his being widely
viewed as a jingoistic imperialist.
The Jungle Books (1894 and 1895): collection of stories written by Rudyard Kipling while he was
living in Vermont. All of the stories were published in magazines in 1893-4. 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." Other readers have interpreted the work as allegories of the
politics and society of the time. 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.
Mowgli has been cited as a major influence on Edgar Rice Burroughs' character Tarzan.
Plot
Kipling then proceeded to write the stories of Mowgli's childhood in detail. Lost by his parents in
the Indian jungle during a tiger attack, a human baby is adopted by the wolves Mother (Raksha) and
Father Wolf, who call him Mowgli the Frog because of his lack of fur. Shere Khan the tiger
demands that they give him the baby but the wolves refuse. Mowgli grows up with the pack,
hunting with his brother wolves. In the pack, Mowgli learned he was able to stare down any wolf,
but his unique ability to remove the painful thorns from the paws of his brothers was deeply
appreciated as well. Bagheera (the black panther) befriends Mowgli, because both he and Mowgli
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have parallel childhood experiences, as Bagheera often mentions, he was "raised in the King's cages
at Oodeypore" from a cub, and thus knows the ways of man. Baloo the bear, teacher of wolves, has
the thankless task of educating Mowgli in The Law of the Jungle. Shere Khan continues to regard
Mowgli as fair game, but eventually Mowgli finds a weapon he can use against the tiger fire.
After driving off Shere Khan, Mowgli goes to a human village where he is adopted by Messua and
her husband whose own son Nathoo was also taken by a tiger.
Anthropomorphism
Personification, a well established literary device from ancient times. It extends back to before
Aesop's Fables in the 6th century BC Greece and the collections of linked fables from India.
As in beast fables, Kipling's characters represent certain traits, qualities, and values. For example,
the wolves personify order. They have a code of law developed by a council that determines every
aspect of life, from the rearing of young to interaction with the other animals. But the wolves are
also capable of great compassion. Mother Wolf loves and protects Mowgli and fights for him to be
accepted by the other wolves. In one episode a tribe of monkeys called the Bandar-Log kidnap
Mowgli. These monkeys are the very antithesis of the orderly wolves; they are some of the most
ignorant and lawless creatures of the jungle and are despised by the other animals. Mowgli's
friends Bagheera the panther, Baloo the bear, and Kaa the rock pythoncome to his rescue.