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    The Jungle Book
    The Jungle Book
    The Jungle Book
    Ebook264 pages3 hours

    The Jungle Book

    By Rudyard Kipling

    4/5

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    HarperCollins is proud to present a range of best-loved, essential classics.

    'There is no harm in a man's cub.'

    Best known for the 'Mowgli' stories, Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book expertly interweaves myth, morals, adventure and powerful story-telling. Set in Central India, Mowgli is raised by a pack of wolves. Along the way he encounters memorable characters such as the foreboding tiger Shere Kahn, Bagheera the panther and Baloo the bear. Including other stories such as that of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, a heroic mongoose and Toomai, a young elephant handler, Kipling's fables remain as popular today as they ever were.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateJun 3, 2010
    ISBN9780007382507
    Author

    Rudyard Kipling

    Rudyard Kipling was born in India in 1865. After intermittently moving between India and England during his early life, he settled in the latter in 1889, published his novel The Light That Failed in 1891 and married Caroline (Carrie) Balestier the following year. They returned to her home in Brattleboro, Vermont, where Kipling wrote both The Jungle Book and its sequel, as well as Captains Courageous. He continued to write prolifically and was the first Englishman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907 but his later years were darkened by the death of his son John at the Battle of Loos in 1915. He died in 1936.

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    Reviews for The Jungle Book

    4/5

    1,292 ratings50 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Not only a ripping yarn, but one with many lessons to be learned -- I have met far too many of the Bandar-Log in my time. It's been quite a while since I've read it, so parents might want to make this a read-aloud to be able to explain some of Kipling's outdated ideas. Take what's good and leave the rest.
    • 5/5
      Even better now than when I was a child

      This is the first time I have read this book since I was a little girl. The stories are well written, for adult and child alike. It is a great thing to get to know these classical characters.
    • 5/5
      Kipling was born in India, was removed to England when ten, to return for work as an adult for 6 years. The Jungle stories are here compiled from magazine articles written while the author was living in Vermont (!). Also contains Baloo's Maxims [46], Mowgli's Song [131], other song-verses [e.g. 42, 89, 300], and the law of the Jungle, interspersed, which lays down rules for the safety of all, as taught to all cubs, by Baloo the sleepy brown bear. Speaking of cubs, there is Mowgli, the feral child, raised by wolves. Other much-loved stories include the heroic mongoose, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, and the elephant-handler, Toomai. Bracketed by the jungle stories is a tale out of the Bering Sea: Kotick, a fur seal, searches for a home for his kind where they will not be persecuted by humans. Since Kipling was a great admirer of Theodor Herzl who sought self-determination for the Jewish people, it is difficult not to view this otherwise out-of-place message as a metaphor in support of a fellow journalist and friend. Ironically, three decades later, a social irritant in Germany usurped a reverse of Kipling's symbol, the Swastica, as an insignia for a political party devoted to persecution.
    • 4/5
      These are among the first books that I remember reading as a young boy. Of them my favorites were the Mowgli tales (developed by Disney for the cinema). Mowgli is an Indian infant who is lost in the jungle after Shere Khan (the tiger) kills his family. Bagheera (the black panther) places him with a wolf family that has a newborn litter. Mowgli's new "parents" and Bagheera and Baloo (the brown bear) sponsor him for membership in the Wolf Pack and, much to Shere Khan's chagrin, he is admitted. Thus Mowgli is raised according to Jungle Law, but has engendered the enmity of Shere Khan who is plotting his revenge and ingratiating himself with the younger wolves. This leads to an exciting denouement and with the several other Mowgli stories--there are some prequels--impressed this young reader. Kipling strikes a nice balance between anthropomorphizing the animals and understanding Mowgli's natural superiority. Also appearing in this collection is the story of Rikki Tikki Tavi--all about an intrepid young mongoose and his life or death battle to protect an Indian villa from a couple of particularly unpleasant cobras. Truly Rikki Tikki Tavi is one of the great heroes in all of literature. These stories are a great introduction for children (girls and boys) to the work of a true master storyteller. I enjoyed the adventures of Mowgli and his friends and eventually discovered more Kipling as I grew older.
    • 4/5
      This a collection of tales that include Mowgli, Baloo, Bagheera, and Shere Khan; the great snake Kaa and the Monkey People; the white seal Kotick; Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and the human family he saves from the cobra couple Kala Nag and Nagaina; Little Toomai and the elephants; and a mule named Billy. "Mowgli's Brothers" is Chapter 1 and it's the basis for the popularized story and film called "The Jungle Book."These are stories of adventure and exploration of the world and its inhabitants. The adventures contain life's lessons along the way. I think most of these stories are fantastic in how they engage the reader through a fun plot and an easy reading style, especially "Mowgli's Brothers" and "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi."
    • 4/5
      Most people will be familiar with this story, and will know why it is a classic. On the other hand, they may have not read the original version with the additional tales and poetry. It was worth reading these, even though the story of Mowgli is certainly the best known story for a good reason! The other tales though show the versatility of the author, and are engaging in their own way
    • 3/5
      A favorite classic from my childhood.
    • 4/5
      I somehow never read any of the Kipling stories as a child, I only knew the Disney animated movie, and later the Jason Scott Lee [as Mowgli] live-action version. So I was very pleased to find just how good the stories are, even to an adult. They're much heavier than the movie portrayed, and there's a lot the movie left out, even from such a short book. Definitely something young people should read.
    • 3/5
      I think this book is a bit gruesome for children, but... oh well, that's just me. Maybe it's all a matter of point of view, the original fairy tales are not half as glamorous as it is shown by the Disney universe.

      I usually dislike books with talking animals, and this one was no exception. I found that this book was rather bland and it failed to draw my attention to any of its tales. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi's was, by far, the most interesting one. As for the other ones, well, they're not really impressive. Indeed, perhaps I'm not the target audience of this book, thus my lack of interest for most of its aspects.
    • 3/5
      What can you say about such a classic as this? Mowgli is raised in the wilds of the Indian Junble by wolves, and has a series of adventures, in which he proves himself brave, and kind and fair. I enjoyed reading the stories that make up The Jungle Book, for all they were a product of the era in which they were written.
    • 4/5
      This is a story about a little boy Mowgli. At the beginning of the story his parents are killed by the lame tiger Shere khan . Shere khan vows to eat Mowgli. But Mowgli learns the law of the jungle , how to hunt and how to make fire! as he is learning this, the evil savage monkeys catch him and make him teach them to weave stick and do man skills. But then Baloo and Bageera his two friends try to rescue him.He eventually kills Shere khan with a landslide of buffaloes when he is acting herd boy at a man village. At the end he hunts freely with his brother wolfs.This book was very good. I recommend this book to many young readers. It helps you expose your mind to literature. There is lots of action in this book,there is lots of humor as well. I like how mowgli is brave . He is very courageous, he fought a tiger,can't get more courageous than that! Once again I recommend this book!
    • 3/5
      The Mowgli stories are excellent - the rest, less so. Even Riki Tiki Tavi, it turns out, isn't so great. Too bad - I remember a great animated version of it that I watched as a kid.The imperialism is present, though not generally so obtrusive as might be expected (the final story an exception, obviously).
    • 5/5
      This is a story about a man who was brought up by wolves. The boy's name is Mougl.This is a famous story.So,It is easy for me to read this book, because Ihave been known this story.This is fiction,but there is a story that a boy was brought by wolves.I hope that peopl and animal can become friends like Mougli.In fact, man hurt a lot of animals. It is sad fact.
    • 3/5
      I had no idea this book had more than the story of Mowgli. I've never even heard of the other stories although my mother says they are classic stories that she grew up with. And the story of Mowgli is much less than what I expected. I didn’t care too much for most of the other stories, though I now know what Rikki-tikki-tavi and Tomai references mean now. It was more of a book of short stories than anything else, which I usually don’t get into very often. It’s checked off the list though. Don’t regret the read since it was so short.
    • 4/5
      Inhaltsangabe:Der Autor Rudyard Kipling erzählt hier vier interessante Tier-Geschichten, die überwiegend in Indien spielen.Da ist die berühmte Geschichte um Mogli, der im Dschungel bei den Wölfen aufwächst und im Alter von 12 Jahren dann zu den Menschen geschickt wird. Der Tiger Shir Khan hat allerdings noch eine Rechnung mit dem Menschenkind offen und so muss Mogli all seinen Mut beweisen.Eine Tier-Geschichte, die außerhalb Indiens spielt, handelt von einer kleinen weißen Robbe, die im Alter von einem Jahr mit ansehen muss, wie eine Gruppe vierjähriger Robben von den Menschen erschlagen und gehäutet wird. Er sucht viele Jahre in den weiten Meeren nach einer Insel, wo die Menschen nicht hinkommen.Und dann gibt es noch den Mungo namens Rikitiki und eine spannende Geschichte mit Elefanten-Treiber.Mein Fazit:Wer kennt die Geschichte um den kleinen Mogli nicht? Walt Disney hat Mogli, Balu und Baghira in einem bezaubernden Film auf die Leinwand gebracht. Doch wie war die Geschichte um Shir Khan wirklich? Warum wollte er unbedingt das Menschenkind haben?Mit einer ziemlich hohen Erwartung ging ich also an das Hörbuch. Ich kann nicht sagen, dass ich enttäuscht wurde, aber wirklich begeistert bin ich auch nicht. Ich glaubte, in diesem Buch würde es eben nur um diese eine Geschichte gehen. Nein, es sind insgesamt vier Geschichten, allesamt aus der Tierwelt, wo die Menschen eine untergeordnete Rolle spielen, trotzdem auf die eine oder andere Weise ihre Spuren hinterlassen.Der Vorleser Stefan Kaminski hat dabei sehr bildlich gesprochen und die Tier-Geräusche beeindruckend nachgemacht. Das ist wirklich positiv anzumerken, dadurch bekam ich ein sehr gutes Bild von der damaligen Zeit und der Begebenheit. Der Erzählstil ist schon etwas eigentümlich und bei den Versen und Gedichten habe ich das nicht immer genau verfolgen können. Da wäre die Print-Version der Geschichten wohl doch besser, zumal sich die Geschichten auch gut zum Vorlesen eignen. Es gibt auch einige brutale Szenen, aber in den Märchen geht es ja auch nicht immer zahm zu.Aufgrund der gut gewählten und ausdrucksstarken Erzähl-Stimme bekommt es vier Sterne!
    • 4/5
      Picked up as premium on Folio Society order instead of 'Autumn' offering. Later saw a preview for new CGI Jungle Book Disney movie, so a refresher read seemed timely. I enjoyed all the stories, most especially 'Toomai of the Elephants' that I had never before encountered.
    • 4/5
      This small paperback edition contained the first three stories of Kipling's Jungle Books - "Mowgli's Brother"; "Kaa's Hunting"; and "Tiger! Tiger!"

      Kipling's prose impressed me with it's poetry and imaginative metaphors. A beautiful love letter to his adopted homeland of India. These stories have aged remarkably well.

      A must read for children, tweens, teen, young adults, and the young at heart.
    • 5/5
      Don't rely on Disney, read the book(s) for yourself! The cartoon I've seen of Rikki Tikki Tavi is a faithful adaptation, and there are other stories I was wholly unaware of, but everything involving Mowgli is a bit different. There's more too. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the film adaptations too, but the book is likewise worth your time, if not more so.
    • 3/5
      Verzameling verhalen waarvan alleen eerste 5 over Mowgli. Verhalen telkens gevolgd door bijhorend lied; zeer mooi geschreven.
    • 2/5
      One of my favorites.
    • 5/5
      I have to say I like the movie better, but I think that's because of the music! It was an interesting story. Kipling either has an amazing imagination or he actually spent time in the jungle. Maybe it's both.
    • 4/5
      Very enjoyable. Kipling knows his Subcontinent thoroughly and this epic yarn of an orphan boy raised by a menagerie of animals is priceless. Even Kaa the snake is a wise teacher to the boy. Much more involved than the wonderful cartoon movie by Disney, this book should be read first.
    • 5/5
      The delightful tales in The Jungle Book can and should be enjoyed by young and old. Mowgli, a human child in India, is rescued by wolves and raised by them with wolf brothers and sisters by wolf parents, after an evil lame tiger chased away his human parents. The tiger who not only kills humans wants to control the wolf pact. He tells the wolves insistently that Mowgli belongs to him. Mowgli has many adventures among the wolves and later among humans. Once, for instance, he was captured when he was ten or eleven years old by monkeys, who are portrayed as stupid forgetful creatures in the book. He is saved during a lengthy battle by Bagheera the black panther who loves him and by Baloo the bear that is his instructor, as well as the python Kaa who respects him. Mowgli leaves the jungle and goes to live in the human village. He thinks that people act and think strangely, speak foolishly, and believe that they can change things, which Mowgli knows cannot be changed. These are just some of Mowgli's many adventures. The book also contains exploits by many different animals, such as the story of the white seal that saves other seals from being killed by men for their skins, the mongoose who rescues a family from husband and wife cobras, and a boy who sees elephants dance.
    • 3/5
      Rudyard Kipling’s _The Jungle Book_ is an enjoyable read. A collection of short stories, all of which revolve around the lives and troubles of different animals and the people who interact with them, it has a surprising amount of depth coupled with rather pleasant prose. The most famous of these stories are probably those that revolve around Mowgli, the jungle boy raised by wolves in India whose adventures with Baloo the bear and Bagheera the panther against the machinations of Shere Khan the tiger are fairly well-known (even resulting in a typically watered-down Disney movie from many years ago).

      All of the stories are notable for their fairly even handed treatment of the interactions between animals and men. The tragedy and pathos of the tribulations and abuse animals often have to suffer at the hands of man are not glossed over, but neither is it implied that all interactions between mankind and the animal kingdom are destructive or unwarranted. The animals are presented as having languages and customs of their own and Kipling generally does a pretty neat trick of managing to straddle the line between having his animal characters behave too much like humans and having them fall into unrelatability by being purely ‘animals’. The most significant contravention of this occurs, I think, in the story “Her Majesty’s Servants” in which, in my opinion, a group of animals serving various roles in a British regiment shade a bit more towards taking on the roles of their all-too human handlers. That quibble aside I enjoyed these morality fables and adventure stories, with those centring on Mowgli and his lessons in the Laws of the Jungle topping the list. Good clean fun with enough meat to the bone to give you something to think about.
    • 4/5
      Rikki-Tikki-Tavi has always been my favourite story in this book.
    • 3/5
      The Jungle Book, a three star rated book, would be a good book for elementary or middle level students. The book comes in pictures or just words. This book is a classic tale that teachers could have a good time with to introduce the jungle and/or wild animals.
    • 4/5
      This classic story of a boy raised by a pack of wolves has lost none of its power over the years, but the Disney movie certainly doesn't do it justice. Mowgli's journey to manhood is so much more complicated than that depiction shows. He learns the jungle law from the vivid characters Baloo the bear and the panther Bagheera and he must fight the tiger Shere Khan, but the true story lies in his life as a misfit. Though he's raised in the jungle, most animals never accept him. Then when he returns to the human village he finds the same is true there. He has no real home and the pain of that breaks his heart.
    • 5/5
      A classic that I loved since I read it for the first time at age 5. My favourite till today is Rikki Tikki Tavi, the mongoose who makes friends with beings so totally different from itself and protects them with wit and skill.Oh, and Bagheera, of course. Every child should have a Bagheera.
    • 3/5
      Wonderful descriptions...but all the laws that must be obeyed just because get under my skin. Why is Akela "The Lone Wolf" when he is the leader of the pack? This is not the only bit that doesn't make sense.When I was young I found the stories about Mowgli tremendously exciting and longed to go live in the jungle with a wolf pack myself. Killing my enemy and being the darling of all other reputable creatures in the jungle seemed like great fun. I also wanted to be a mongoose. I found many of the poems moving and evocative.The chatter of the livestock in the camp in the last story was obviously intended as some kind of allegory about the social structure of the British Empire and neighboring Afghanistan.As an adult I'm much more interested in finding out the truth behind the tales. For example, fur seal rookeries are really as crowded as Kipling describes them and fur seals really do live out in the ocean for a good eight months at a time. Sexual dimorphism is extremely pronounced with full grown males weighing up to five times as much as full grown females. The seals can way up to 500 lbs. Clubbing the seals was the preferred way to begin the process of skinning them, and so forth.The reading by Rebecca Burns was too fast, almost breathless.
    • 3/5
      Enjoyed the main story of The Jungle Book, didn't enjoy the other stories in the book quite as much. Other than The Jungle Book I liked the story of Little Toomai.Wonder if J.K. Rowling was inspired by Rudyard Kipling when she created Nagini as there are two snakes in a story named Nag and Nagaina.Made me want to read The Just So stories again. I might look out for it on the Kindle.Think it tied in well with my EA300 course though I enjoyed it more for not having to study it!Would love to get a pretty illustrated version to read again in the future.

    Book preview

    The Jungle Book - Rudyard Kipling

    The Jungle Book

    Collins Classics

    Rudyard Kipling

    History of Collins

    In 1819, Millworker William Collins from Glasgow, Scotland, set up a company for printing and publishing pamphlets, sermons, hymn books and prayer books. That company was Collins and was to mark the birth of HarperCollins Publishers as we know it today. The long tradition of Collins dictionary publishing can be traced back to the first dictionary William published in 1824, Greek and English Lexicon. Indeed, from 1840 onwards, he began to produce illustrated dictionaries and even obtained a licence to print and publish the Bible.

    Soon after, William published the first Collins novel, Ready Reckoner, however it was the time of the Long Depression, where harvests were poor, prices were high, potato crops had failed and violence was erupting in Europe. As a result, many factories across the country were forced to close down and William chose to retire in 1846, partly due to the hardships he was facing.

    Aged 30, William’s son, William II took over the business. A keen humanitarian with a warm heart and a generous spirit, William II was truly ‘Victorian’ in his outlook. He introduced new, up-to-date steam presses and published affordable editions of Shakespeare’s works and Pilgrim’s Progress, making them available to the masses for the first time. A new demand for educational books meant that success came with the publication of travel books, scientific books, encyclopaedias and dictionaries. This demand to be educated led to the later publication of atlases and Collins also held the monopoly on scripture writing at the time.

    In the 1860s Collins began to expand and diversify and the idea of ‘books for the millions’ was developed. Affordable editions of classical literature were published and in 1903 Collins introduced 10 titles in their Collins Handy Illustrated Pocket Novels. These proved so popular that a few years later this had increased to an output of 50 volumes, selling nearly half a million in their year of publication. In the same year, The Everyman’s Library was also instituted, with the idea of publishing an affordable library of the most important classical works, biographies, religious and philosophical treatments, plays, poems, travel and adventure. This series eclipsed all competition at the time and the introduction of paperback books in the 1950s helped to open that market and marked a high point in the industry.

    HarperCollins is and has always been a champion of the classics and the current Collins Classics series follows in this tradition – publishing classical literature that is affordable and available to all. Beautifully packaged, highly collectible and intended to be reread and enjoyed at every opportunity.

    Life & Times

    About the Author

    Rudyard Kipling was born in Mumbai, formerly known as Bombai, when it was part of British India during the days of the British Empire. He was born in 1865, the year that Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published, undoubtedly a genre of writing that later influenced his work. At the age of six, Kipling was sent to England to continue his education. He was deeply unhappy during this part of his childhood and it seems that this was when he began inventing companions in the form of anthropomorphic animals.

    Having finished his schooling, Kipling returned to British India to become assistant editor of a newspaper in Lahore, which is now in Pakistan. He immediately felt at home and quickly forgot about his time in England. In 1887 Kipling moved from Lahore to Allahabad to work on another newspaper. He had already published a great many short stories by this time and two years later left India on a world tour. This included a trip across the United States and then a voyage by boat to England. Having ensconced himself in London he published his first novel The Light that Failed (1890), but evidently had a crisis of self confidence and suffered a nervous breakdown. His personal life was set to change in 1892 however, when he married Carrie Balestier, the sister of Wolcot Ballestier, with whom he had collaborated on another book.

    Their honeymoon took them to Vermont in the United States, where they decided to settle because Carrie had fallen pregnant. The Kiplings remained in Vermont for four years. During this period Rudyard appeared to be content and wrote his best known work, The Jungle Book. Unfortunately a political crisis between Britain and the United States led to anti-British sentiment and Kipling felt it most from the press. A family feud between the Kiplings and Carrie’s brother proved the final straw and sealed Rudyard’s decision to leave America.

    The Kipling family moved to the south coast of Devon, England and then East Sussex from 1902. By now Kipling was a famous man and enjoyed his growing celebrity in the first decade of the 20th century. In 1907 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, such was his fame and reputation worldwide. World War I was, however, to have a tragic outcome for the Kiplings. In 1915 their son John was killed. He had gone to war in the blind spirit of enthusiasm that characterized the age and fallen at the Battle of Loos. Kipling felt eternal guilt at his son’s death because he had used his influence to get John accepted into the army following his initial rejection for having poor eyesight.

    Following Kipling’s own death in 1936 his work became rather unfashionable, partly because of changing tastes and partly because the British Empire began to disintegrate following World War II. British India itself gained its independence from colonial rule in 1947 and was partitioned into Pakistan and India. In the latter half of the 20th century Kipling’s work became part of the cannon of English literary history, especially his two ‘Jungle Book’ collections, and he is now considered one of the all time greats.

    In India, his legacy is a matter of contention because his writing is centred on colonial times and many of his characters are intrinsically racist. It isn’t that Kipling himself was prejudiced particularly, but that the culture among the British colonists was superior in its view of the natives. Kipling therefore wrote his characters as he witnessed real people around him. It would be true to say that many Europeans had an elitist attitude to non-Caucasian races at that time, so it would be inappropriate to judge Kipling by modern standards of political correctness.

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    The Jungle Book

    When The Jungle Book is mentioned, most people think of the Disney animated film. This actually has very little to do with the stories of Rudyard Kipling, as Walt Disney only took the basic idea of anthropomorphic jungle animals and transformed them into lovable children’s characters. Kipling’s characters and stories are far darker and fantastical. In fact, Kipling deliberately wrote his stories as fables, to provide moral and ethical guidance to his readers, both young and old. The first collection of stories was published in 1894, quickly followed by a second in 1895, appropriately titled The Second Jungle Book.

    Mowgli, the central human character, is a young boy who has been raised by a she wolf. He is thus in the unique position of being able to communicate with the various animals of the jungle. There had been various tales of children having been raised by wild animals and this is where Kipling drew his inspiration from. Some of those tales had an element of truth to them, but the majority were myths. Nevertheless, they made a solid foundation for Kipling’s stories, as Mowgli was the ideal transitional character. In essence he was half human, half animal in his psychology. He also possessed the naivety of a child and was therefore open-minded and fearless.

    Mowgli appears in three of the stories in The Jungle Book. There are seven all told, with a song chapter following each one. As well as Mowgli and his animal companions, there are stories about a white seal named Kotick, a mongoose named Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, another boy named Toomai, and a group of domesticated Indian animals living in an army barracks. Kipling anthropomorphizes throughout The Jungle Book, so that he is able to tell his stories from the animals’ point of view. In doing so, he manages to comment on human behaviour in an objective, as opposed to subjective way. The animals in his books observe society, free from the constraints of culture and etiquette, but they also have their own interests and concerns. In English literature the practice of writing humanlike animals was established with Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865. The earliest use of this device however, dates back to the ancient Greeks, with Aesop’s fables. By using animals to teach people lessons in wisdom it somehow made it more acceptable and easier to digest, especially for younger readers.

    In The Second Jungle Book we find Mowgli returned in the first five stories out of a total of eight. The second story, The King’s Ankus, illustrates very well Kipling’s use of Mowgli’s naive outlook on life. In the story Mowgli finds a very valuable, jewel encrusted ankus (an elephant stick), but to him it is just a curious object, which he tosses away unaware that to other humans it is priceless and even worth killing for. Kipling uses this as a metaphor for pointing out the ridiculousness of the want of wealth in society, when all that matters is that we are healthy and happy.

    The remaining three stories are about an Indian politician, three scavenging animals having a quarrel and a young Inuit hunter. This final story and the story of the white seal Kotick, in the first book, are anomalies as they are not set in the jungle at all, but in the northern latitudes at or near the Arctic Circle. Although Kipling had spent some years living in India, he actually wrote both books whilst residing in the American state of Vermont, which borders with Canada. This is evidently where he got his inspiration for these two misplaced stories.

    It also explains the distanced and romanticized view of India in his books. There is something about his approach to the stories that tells the reader that Kipling is evoking memories or confabulations of an India that perhaps never quite existed. This, however, does nothing to erode the charm of his writing and only serves to condense his images so that the reader is taken in fully by his fictional world.

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    Table of Contents

    Cover Page

    Title Page

    History of Collins

    Life & Times

    PREFACE

    MOWGLI’S BROTHERS

    HUNTING-SONG OF THE SEEONEE PACK

    KAA’S HUNTING

    ROAD-SONG OF THE BANDAR-LOG

    ‘TIGER! TIGER!’

    MOWGLI’S SONG

    THE WHITE SEAL

    LUKANNON

    ‘RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI’

    DARZEE’S CHAUNT

    TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS

    SHIV AND THE GRASSHOPPER

    HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS

    PARADE-SONG OF THE CAMP-ANIMALS

    CLASSIC LITERATURE: WORDS AND PHRASES

    Copyright

    About the Publisher

    PREFACE

    The demands made by a work of this nature upon the generosity of specialists are very numerous, and the Editor would be wanting in all title to the generous treatment he has received were he not willing to make the fullest possible acknowledgement of his indebtedness.

    His thanks are due in the first place to the scholarly and accomplished Bahadur Shah, baggage elephant 174 on the Indian Register, who, with his amiable sister Pudmini, most courteously supplied the history of ‘Toomai of the Elephants’ and much of the information contained in ‘Her Majesty’s Servants’. The adventures of Mowgli were collected at various times and in various places from a multitude of informants, most of whom desire to preserve the strictest anonymity. Yet, at this distance, the Editor feels at liberty to thank a Hindu gentleman of the old rock, an esteemed resident of the upper slopes of Jakko, for his convincing if somewhat caustic estimate of the national characteristics of his caste – the Presbytes. Sahi, a savant of infinite research and industry, a member of the recently disbanded Seeonee Pack, and an artist well known at most of the local fairs of Southern India, where his muzzled dance with his master attracts the youth, beauty, and culture of many villages, have contributed most valuable data on people, manners, and customs. These have been freely drawn upon, in the stories of ‘Tiger! Tiger!’, ‘Kaa’s Hunting’, and ‘Mowgli’s Brothers’. For the outlines of ‘Rikki-tikki-tavi’ the editor stands indebted to one of the leading herpetologists of Upper India, a fearless and independent investigator who, resolving ‘not to live but know’, lately sacrificed his life through over-application to the study of our Eastern Thanatophidia. A happy accident of travel enabled the Editor, when a passenger on the Empress of India, to be of some slight assistance to a fellow-passenger. How richly his poor services were repaid, readers of ‘The White Seal’ may judge for themselves.

    MOWGLI’S BROTHERS

    Now Chil 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 grey 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’; and he was going to spring downhill 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 the 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 Gidur-log [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; and it pleased him to see Mother and Father Wolf look uncomfortable.

    Tabaqui sat still, rejoicing in the mischief that he had made: 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 tonight,’ 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 gipsies 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 defenceless 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 camp-fire, 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

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