The Jungle Book

Mowgli is a human toddler who crawls into a wolf den in the Seeonee hills of central India on a warm night. He is fearless and curious even before he can talk, and the wolves give him a name that means Frog. Because he is a man-cub among animals who live by the Law of the Jungle, his place in the pack is a question from the first night.

Bagheera is a black panther, the swiftest and most feared hunter in the Seeonee jungle, and every creature there steps out of his path. He speaks in a voice as soft as dripping honey and thinks carefully before he moves. When the wolf pack must decide what to do with a man-cub, he is one of the jungle people who has a voice at Council Rock.

Baloo is an old brown bear whose job is to teach the Law of the Jungle to the wolf cubs of the Seeonee Pack. Because he eats only honey, nuts, and roots, he is welcome anywhere in the jungle. He is patient, long-winded, and easily wounded by rudeness, and he believes a lesson drilled in hard is a lesson that will one day save a life.

Shere Khan is a huge tiger who hunts along the Waingunga River and has limped on one crooked foot since the day he was born. He is proud and loud, quick to announce that something belongs to him, and the other jungle animals look down on him for killing cattle and ignoring the Law. On the night the first tale opens, he has shifted his hunting grounds into the Seeonee hills without warning.

Father Wolf is an Indian wolf of the Seeonee Pack, the father of four cubs, who lives with his family in a cave in the hills. He is stiff, law-abiding, and quick to anger when the Law is broken, and he takes his duty to hunt for the den seriously. On the warm evening the book opens, he stretches, yawns, and prepares to go out for the night's hunting.

Mother Wolf is a she-wolf of the Seeonee Pack, known in the jungle as Raksha — The Demon — and she is not called that for compliment's sake. She lies in the cave with her big gray nose dropped across four tumbling cubs. She is quieter than Father Wolf until something comes too close to her children, and then the whole den changes.

Akela is the Lone Wolf who leads the Seeonee Pack by strength and cunning. He has fallen twice into a wolf trap in his youth and once been beaten and left for dead, so he knows the manners of men. At Council Rock he lies out at full length on the highest stone while the pack sits below him, and he is the wolf who cries, 'Look well, O Wolves!'

Gray Brother is the eldest of the four cubs born in the Seeonee cave the same season the man-cub arrives. He grows up tumbling with Mowgli as a litter-mate, and he keeps the wolf habit of speaking plainly. Among the four, he is the one who stays closest to the man-cub's side.

Kaa is a huge rock python, old enough to be a little deaf, who spends his days stretched on a warm ledge changing his skin and thinking about dinner. He is not a poison snake; his strength is in his hug. He speaks with old-fashioned courtesy, and he takes a quiet pride in his length.

Rikki-tikki-tavi is a young mongoose whose family motto is to run and find out about everything. He is bold, tirelessly curious, and almost impossible to frighten, and nothing pleases him more than exploring a new place from top to bottom. Mongooses are born to hunt snakes, and Rikki-tikki has all the speed and nerve of his family, though he is still very young and has a great deal to learn.

Nag is a big black cobra, five feet from tongue to tail, who lives in the grass of an English family's garden in India. He carries the spectacle-mark on his hood that cobras say the god Brahm put there, and he expects other creatures to be afraid when he spreads it. He speaks softly, watches every movement, and thinks of the garden as his ground.

Nagaina is Nag's wife, a cobra who shares the garden grass with him. She is quicker to strike from behind than to talk, and the other small creatures of the garden are more afraid of her than of Nag. She has a clutch of eggs to think about, and she does not forget an insult.

Kotick is a young fur seal born on the crowded beaches of Novastoshnah, on an island far north in the Bering Sea, where hundreds of thousands of seals haul out every summer. He arrives with a coat of pure white, something no seal there has ever seen before, and he grows into a powerful swimmer and a stubborn asker of questions. While the other young seals are happy simply to play in the surf, Kotick wants to know why things are the way they are.

Messua is the wife of the richest man in a village on the edge of the Seeonee jungle. She lost a son named Nathoo to a tiger, and she still looks for his face in other children. She wears heavy copper rings and speaks gently, and her hut holds a red lacquered bedstead, copper cooking pots, and a looking-glass from the country fair.

Little Toomai is ten years old, four feet tall, and the eldest son of Big Toomai, driver of the great elephant Kala Nag. He was born under the elephant's shadow and has played with the end of Kala Nag's trunk since before he could walk. According to custom he will take his father's place on the elephant's neck when he grows up, but what he likes now is the hill forests, not the brick elephant-lines his father prefers.

Big Toomai is the mahout who drives Kala Nag, son of Black Toomai who took the elephant to Abyssinia, and grandson of Toomai of the Elephants who saw him caught. He is getting old and does not love wild elephants. He would rather have brick elephant-lines, one stall to each animal, than running up and down among the hills.

Kala Nag — Black Snake — has served the Indian Government for forty-seven years and is nearly seventy, a ripe age for an elephant. He has hauled guns, carried tents, and worked the keddahs where wild elephants are caught. He stands ten fair feet at the shoulders, and the men of the camp say there is nothing in the way of fighting that he does not know.