Mowgli Stories

Mowgli Stories

In the Rukh describes how Gisborne, an English forest ranger in India at the time of the British Raj, discovers a young man named Mowgli, who has extraordinary skill at hunting and tracking, and asks him to join the forestry service. Later Gisborne learns the reason for Mowgli's almost superhuman talents: he was raised by wild animals in the jungle.

Kipling then proceeded write the stories of Mowgli's childhood in detail. Lost by his parents in the Indian jungle, a human baby is adopted by the wolves Mother (Raksha) and Father Wolf, who call him "Mowgli the Frog" because of his furlessness. Shere Khan the tiger demands that they give him the baby but the wolves refuse. Mowgli grows up with and runs with the pack, hunting with his brother wolves. Bagheera (the panther) befriends Mowgli, partly because Mowgli, being a "Man", has the power of dominion over beasts: Bagheera cannot withstand Mowgli's gaze. Baloo the bear, teacher of wolves, has the thankless task of educating Mowgli in The Law of the Jungle.

Mowgli has many adventures among the talking animals in his jungle paradise, assuming ever-increasing mastery as he approaches manhood. Shere Khan regards Mowgli as fair game, but eventually Mowgli finds the one weapon he can use against the tiger - fire. After driving off Shere Khan, Mowgli returns to the human village where he is adopted by Messua and her husband who believe he is their own long-lost son Nathoo. (In fact we never find out if this is true.)

While herding buffalo for the village Mowgli learns that the tiger is still planning to kill him, so with the aid of two wolves he traps Shere Khan in a ravine, where the buffalo trample him. Seeing this, the vilagers persecute Mowgli and his adopted parents as witches. Mowgli runs back to the jungle but soon learns that the villagers are planning to kill Messua and her husband, so he rescues them and sends elephants and buffalo to trample the village to the ground. In later stories he finds and then discards an ancient treasure, not realising that men will kill to own it; and with the aid of Kaa the python he leads the wolves in a war against the dhole (red dogs).

Finally, Mowgli stumbles across the village where his human mother is now living, which forces him to come to terms with his humanity and decide whether to rejoin his fellow humans.

Kipling also adapted the Mowgli stories for The Jungle Play in 1899, but the play was never produced on stage and the manuscript was lost for almost a century. It was finally published in book form in 2000.

UK paperback edition: ISBN 014118292X

Possibly useful to have a separate page discussing the play script and its similarities and differences to the original stories