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35-464: In the stories, the name Mowgli is said to mean "bald", describing his lack of fur. Kipling later said "Mowgli is a name I made up. It does not mean 'frog' in any language that I know of." Part of Kipling's inspiration for the story of Mowgli is believed to have been William Henry Sleeman 's account of six cases in India in which wild children had been raised by wolves. That account was first published in

70-718: A captain in the Narmada valley region, he noticed several basaltic formations which he identified as having been "raised above the waters." By digging around in the Bara Simla Hills, part of the Lameta formation near Jabalpur, he unearthed several petrified trees, as well as some fragmentary dinosaur fossil specimens. Subsequently, he sent these specimens to London and to the Indian Museum in Calcutta . In 1877

105-452: A detailed vocabulary of words having special meaning to the Thugs, which would be incomprehensible to their victims. These include secret exchanges of greetings that mutually identified one Thug to another. Sleeman served as Resident at Gwalior from 1843 to 1849, and at Lucknow from 1849 to 1856. Whilst Resident at Lucknow he survived three assassination attempts. He was also opposed to

140-452: A group of Hokas get hold of a copy of The Jungle Book and begin to act it out, enlisting the help of a human boy to play Mowgli. The boy's mother, who is a little bemused to see teddy bears trying to act like wolves, tags along to try to keep him (and the Hokas) out of trouble. The situation is complicated by the arrival of three alien diplomats who just happen to resemble a monkey, a tiger and

175-399: A snake. This story appears in the collection Hokas Pokas! (1998) and is also available online. The Third Jungle Book (1992) by Pamela Jekel is a collection of new Mowgli stories in a fairly accurate pastiche of Kipling's style. Hunting Mowgli (2001) by Maxim Antinori is a very short novel which describes a fateful meeting between Mowgli and a human hunter. The Jungle Book: Last of

210-463: A tiger attack, he is adopted by the Wolf Mother, Raksha and Father Wolf , who call him Mowgli (frog) because of his lack of fur and his refusal to sit still. 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 learns he is able to stare down any wolf, and his unique ability to remove

245-749: A toddler in the Disney live-action reimagination , which was released in 3D in April 2016. Mowgli was played by Rohan Chand in Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle , released in November 2018. William Henry Sleeman Major-general Sir William Henry Sleeman KCB (8 August 1788 – 10 February 1856) was a British soldier and administrator in British India . He is best known for his work from

280-553: A working knowledge of many other languages of the subcontinent. Later in his life, Sleeman was described as "probably the only British officer to address the King of Oudh in correct Urdu and Persian ." His 800-page report on Oudh is still highly regarded as among the most accurate and comprehensive studies of the kingdom during the 1800s. Sleeman made the first recorded discovery of dinosaur fossils in India in 1828. While serving as

315-498: Is a short self published Mexican memoir written in Spanish in which the author details the deep emotional and physical impact Disney's animated version of Mowgli had during his lonely early childhood years as a symbolic " surrogate twin brother " figure and role model after learning about his real twin brother 's death one day after their preterm birth . It also includes an exclusive interview with Diana Santos who voiced

350-457: Is best known for his work suppressing the Thuggee secret society. Dating back as early as the 1300s, Thugs were a secret criminal group, partly hereditary in membership, who specialized in the murder by strangulation of travelers as a prelude to theft. Thugs had been known to native rulers and occasionally to Europeans, but the scope of their crimes was not appreciated (later estimated at least in

385-707: The Bengal Army and later served in the Nepal War between 1814 and 1816. He contracted malaria in 1813, symptoms of which occasionally reappeared for the remainder of his life (with sometimes debilitating intensity). In 1820 he was selected for civil employ, and became junior assistant to the Governor-General 's agent in the Saugor and Nerbudda territories. In 1822 he was placed in charge of Narsinghpur District , and would later describe his two years in

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420-542: The 1830s in suppressing the organized criminal gangs known as Thuggee . He also discovered the holotype specimen of the sauropod dinosaur Titanosaurus indicus in Jabalpur in 1828. The first outbreak of lathyrism in India in 1844 was reported by him. Sleeman was born in Stratton, Cornwall , the fifth of eight children of Philip Sleeman, a yeoman and supervisor of excise of St Tudy . In 1809 Sleeman joined

455-410: 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. It is uncertain if Mowgli is actually the returned Nathoo, although it is stated in " Tiger! Tiger! " that

490-506: The Mowgli stories for The Jungle Play in 1899, but the play was never produced on stage. The manuscript was lost for almost a century. It was published in book form in 2000. Only six years after the first publication of The Jungle Book , E. Nesbit 's The Wouldbegoods (1899) included a passage in which some children act out a scene from the book. Mowgli has been cited as a major influence on Edgar Rice Burroughs who created and developed

525-472: The Species (2013) by Mark L. Miller is a series of comic books that tells the story of a female Mowgli who unintentionally started a war between animal tribes after killing Shere Khan to avenge the fallen members of the wolf tribe. Mowgli's Missionary (2017) by James Penrice is a novel which describes Mowgli's unusual encounter with a missionary . Mi Hermano Lobo (My Brother Wolf) (2020) by Rafael Jaime

560-413: The annexation of Oudh by Lord Dalhousie , but his advice was disregarded. Sleeman believed that British authorities should annex only regions of India that were plagued by violence, unjust leadership or poor infrastructure and thus maintained that native leadership should be left in place when their rule was even-handed. Sleeman also took an interest in phrenology and believed that the measurements of

595-433: The character Tarzan . Mowgli was also an influence for a number of other "wild boy" characters . Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson used the Mowgli stories as the basis for their humorous 1957 science fiction short story "Full Pack (Hokas Wild)". This is one of a series featuring a teddy bear-like race called Hokas who enjoy human literature but cannot quite grasp the distinction between fact and fiction. In this story,

630-546: The character in the Latin American Spanish dub of the 1967 film . An audiobook version narrated by the author was uploaded on YouTube in September 2021. It is similar in tone to the 2016 documentary Life, Animated . Feral Dreams: Mowgli and his Mothers (2020) by Stephen Alter is a novel which describes Mowgli's harrowing process in trying to adapt to civilization and his coming of age within

665-677: The first volume of Sleeman's Journey Through the Kingdom of Oude in 1848-1850 (1858) and reprinted in 1852 as An Account of Wolves Nurturing Children in Their Dens, by an Indian Official and in The Zoologist (1888 12 (135): 87-98). The Mowgli stories, including "In the Rukh", were first collected in chronological order in one volume as The Works of Rudyard Kipling Volume VII: The Jungle Book (1907) (Volume VIII of this series contained

700-497: The forestry service. Muller, the head of the Department of Woods and Forests of India as well as Gisborne's boss, meets Mowgli, checks his elbows and knees, noting the callouses and scars, and figures Mowgli is not using magic or demons, having seen a similar case in 30 years of service. Muller also invites Mowgli to join the service, to which Mowgli agrees. Later, Gisborne learns the reason for Mowgli's almost superhuman talents; he

735-627: The genus was named Titanosaurus Indicus by Richard Lydekker , but the taxonomic position is in doubt. Sleeman wrote about wild children who had been raised by wolves with his notes on six cases. This was first published in the first volume of his Journey through the kingdom of Oude in 1848-1850 (1858) and reprinted in 1852 as An Account of Wolves Nurturing Children in Their Dens, by an Indian Official and in The Zoologist (1888 12 (135): 87–98). This discovery inspired Rudyard Kipling 's Mowgli character in The Jungle Book . Sleeman

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770-736: The non-Mowgli stories from the Jungle Books), and subsequently in All the Mowgli Stories (1933). "In the Rukh" describes how Gisborne, an English forest ranger in the Pench area in Seoni at the time of the British Raj , discovers a young man named Mowgli, who has extraordinary skills in hunting, tracking, and driving wild animals (with the help of his wolf brothers). He asks him to join

805-529: The operations for the Suppression of Thuggee and in February 1839, he assumed charge of the office of Commissioner for the Suppression of Thuggee and Dacoity . During these operations, more than 1400 Thugs were hanged or transported for life . One of them, Bahram , confessed to having strangled 125-931 persons with his turban. Detection was only possible by means of informers, for whose protection from

840-416: The painful thorns from the paws of his brothers is deeply appreciated as well. Bagheera , the black panther, befriends Mowgli because both he and Mowgli 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

875-517: The role as by far the most laborious of his life. He was gazetted to the rank of captain in 1825, and in 1828 assumed charge of Jubbulpore District . In 1831 he transferred to Sagar district to cover for a colleague on leave. Upon his colleague's return, Sleeman continued with magisterial duties in Sagar until 1835. He displayed a facility for languages, becoming fluent in Hindi-Urdu and developing

910-689: The skulls could help him identify criminal ethnic groups. He died and was buried at sea near Ceylon on a recovery trip to Britain in 1856, just six days after being awarded the Order of the Bath (KCB). The village Sleemanabad in Madhya Pradesh , India was named in his honour. Whilst in Jubbulpore, he married Amélie Josephine, the daughter of Count Blondin de Fontenne, a French nobleman. They had seven children. His second daughter, Henrietta,

945-552: The tens of thousands of victims across India). In 1835, Sleeman captured "Feringhea" (one of the inspirations for the character Syeed Amir Ali in Confessions of a Thug is based) and got him to turn King's evidence . He took Sleeman to a grave with a hundred bodies, told the circumstances of the killings, and named the Thugs who had done it. After initial investigations confirmed what Feringhea had said, Sleeman started an extensive campaign, being appointed General Superintendent of

980-488: The tiger who carried off Messua's son was similar to the one that attacked Mowgli's parents. Messua would like to believe that her son has returned, but she herself realises that this is unlikely. 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. The tiger dies and Mowgli sets to skin him. After being accused of witchcraft and cast out of

1015-631: The vengeance of their associates a special prison was established at Jabalpur (at the time Jubbulpore ). Sleeman had a Government Report made in 1839. Sleeman wrote three books about the Thugs: Ramaseeana , or a Vocabulary of the peculiar language used by Thugs ; Report on the Depredations Committed by the Thug Gangs of Upper and Central India ; and The Thugs or Phansigars of India . The first of these books offers

1050-537: The village and its fields to the ground. Later, Mowgli finds and then discards an ancient treasure ("The King's Ankus "), not realising it is so valuable that men would kill to own it. With the aid of Kaa the python, he leads the wolves in a war against the dhole ( "Red Dog" ). Finally, Mowgli stumbles across the village where his adopted human mother (Messua) is now living, which forces him to come to terms with his humanity and decide whether to rejoin his fellow humans in " The Spring Running ". Rudyard Kipling adapted

1085-504: The village, Mowgli returns to the jungle with Shere Khan's hide and reunites with his wolf family, but it is mentioned that he later becomes married and goes back to the man village. In later stories in The Jungle Book' s sequel, The Second Jungle Book , Mowgli learns that the villagers are planning to kill Messua and her husband for harboring him. He rescues them and sends elephants, water buffaloes, and other animals to trample

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1120-468: The walls of an orphanage located in the Gangetic Plain and run by Miss Cranston, an American missionary who christens him Daniel. At the same time, Mowgli recalls some of his adventures in the jungle prior to his abduction and desperately yearns for his freedom. In this story Mowgli is raised by an elephant matriarch. Mowgli has been played by many actors. In the 1942 film adaptation , Mowgli

1155-603: Was married to William Alexander Ross, an uncle of Sir Ronald Ross . A grandson of Sleeman, Colonel Sir James Lewis Sleeman , who also wrote about thuggee and shikar ( big game hunting ), became a pioneer of wildlife photography in India. The Second Jungle Book The Second Jungle Book is a sequel to The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling . First published in 1895, it features five stories about Mowgli and three unrelated stories, all but one set in India , most of which Kipling wrote while living in Vermont . All of

1190-429: Was played by Sabu Dastagir . In the 1994 film adaptation , he was played by Sean Naegeli as a child, and later throughout the film he was played by Jason Scott Lee . In The Second Jungle Book: Mowgli and Baloo , he was played by Jamie Williams. In The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story , he was played by Brandon Baker , Ryan Taylor and off-screen by Fred Savage . Mowgli was played by Neel Sethi and by Kendrick Reyes as

1225-466: Was raised by a pack of wolves in the jungle (explaining the scars on his elbows and knees from going on all fours). Mowgli marries the daughter of Gisborne's butler, Abdul Gafur, and conceives a son with her. Kipling then proceeded to write the stories of Mowgli's childhood in detail in The Jungle Book , which serves as a prequel to In the Rukh . Lost by his parents as a baby in the Indian jungle during

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