Mowgli's Brothers

"Mowgli's Brothers" is the first story about Mowgli in The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. This yarn tells how Mowgli came to the wolves as a baby boy, how Shere Khan the tiger became his enemy, how he was accepted into the Seeonee wolf pack, and how Baloo and Bagheera became his teachers.

It was a warm summer night when Tabaqui, the jackal – the mean, sly, mischief-maker – crept to the cave of Mother and Father Wolf. "Shere Khan, the big one, has shifted his hunting grounds. He will hunt among these hills," he told them.

Father Wolf was upset because Shere Khan, the tiger, killed cattle and angered the villagers, bringing trouble to the jungle. As they listened they heard the angry, snarly whine of the tiger. "He is hunting man!" said Mother Wolf. "Listen! Something is coming!"

Father Wolf crouched – then halted in mid-spring. "Man!" he said, "a man's cub. Look!" His jaws closed gently over the little boy's back and he carried him into the cave and placed him amongst the other cubs. Then a dark shadow crossed the doorway.

"The man cub is mine, give him to me!" Shere Khan's roar filled the cave. But Mother Wolf and Father Wolf were not to be ordered around by somebody not from the pack. So Shere Khan slunk away.

"I will call him Mowgli (the Frog)" said Raksha, the Mother Wolf, "because his skin is smooth and without hair, like a frog's."

So Mowgli stayed with Raksha and Father Wolf and their own four cubs. When they were old enough to run a little, they set off on the night of the full moon, through the jungle to the Council Circle. There they found Akela sitting on the Council Rock with all the wolves in the pack gathered around. The cubs that had been born that month, and Mowgli, were in the centre of the circle, and all the wolves looked over these young cubs so that they would know them if they met in the Jungle.

Then Shere Khan roared from the trees, "What have the Free People to do with a man cub in the pack?" Akela, the pack leader, reminded the wolves that if there was an argument about a cub, two people would have to speak for him. So Baloo, the brown bear, stood up and said, "I will speak for the man cub."

Then a black shadow dropped from the trees. It was the mighty hunter, Bagheera, the panther. "I have a bull, newly killed, to pay for the man cub's life," he said. So Mowgli was allowed to stay. He learned the laws of the jungle from Baloo, and how to creep and stalk and hunt from Bagheera. That is how he was accepted as a member of the pack.

Links

• More information about Mowgli's Brothers on Wikipedia
• The full story of Mowgli's Brothers, published in 1894