This is topic Animals native to India a la Rudyard Kipling's "Mowgli"--a question in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.


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Posted by beverly (Member # 6246) on :
 
I am planning on using part of Kipling's story at our upcoming Cub Scout Blue and Gold Banquet. As I was reading it, I began thinking, "There aren't panthers or bears or wolves in India--are there?"

Can anyone help me out here? I have done internet searches and looked in wikipedia, but I can't find the answer. This is just curiosity, but if it is as inaccurate as I am thinking, it's going to always bother me. *shifts uncomfortably*
 

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Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
 
Kipling did actually live in India, didn't he? Also, "Panther" is kind of a general purpose term for a big black cat, which is one of those things that evolution comes up with spontaneously with fair regularity. I think there were wolves and bears, but they didn't dress up in coconuts and sing very often.
 

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Posted by beverly (Member # 6246) on :
 
Did he live in India? I haven't tried researching about his life yet. If he lived there, he might know much better.

I am not a fan of Disney's Jungle Book . But one of these days I need to watch the whole set of cartoons Chuck Jones did out of the Jungle Book: Riki Tiki Tavi, The White Seal (I've seen recently and have the children's picture book of), Mowgli's Brothers? I don't know what the last one was called. I haven't seen it since I was a little kid.
 

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Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
 
Apparently he was born there.
 

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Posted by gnixing (Member # 768) on :
 
a leopard is a panther (genus) and they can be found in the "black" variety.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard

wolves and bears appear to live pretty much everywhere, from europe to asia, and presumably that includes india.

edit: to add that the places where leopards live include india.

[ February 20, 2005, 12:37 AM: Message edited by: gnixing ]
 

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Posted by gnixing (Member # 768) on :
 
here's a bear in india

this site has lists an indian wolf (endangered species)
 

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Posted by beverly (Member # 6246) on :
 
Thanks, y'all. I actually feel better now.

Too bad about the Indian wolf being endangered though.

[ February 20, 2005, 02:51 AM: Message edited by: beverly ]
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
I've heard from many sources that Kipling's use of animals was generally very accurate, with some liberty taken for the story. I would take that to mean that he might be off on some behaviors, or in locales, but I doubt he used species that weren't in India at all.

I have a footnoted version (at school) that documents specific references to two famous works on Indian zoology that Kipling relied on. I'm sure those works contained ideas we've since discovered to be inaccurate; I'm equally sure that they weren't off by whole species.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
Here's a jumping off point for some of his sources.

quote:

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Bagh Van offers you a matchless opportunity to explore this superb slice of tiger habitat. Theses jungles were once celebrated by naturalists like Captain J.Forsyth in "Highlands of Central India", Robert Sterndale in "Camp Life on The Satpura Range",William Sterndale and of course by Rudyard Kipling. Though he never visited the region, Kipling set the magically evocative Jungle Book in the forests of the Pench Valley and the Seoni hill tracts based on accounts written by Sleeman, Forsyth, Sterndale and correspondence with locals.

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I bet you can find some of these sources online.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
Don't forget orangutans.
 

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Posted by beverly (Member # 6246) on :
 


Were there actually orangutans in the original story? Or was that a Disney thing?
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
They weren't Orangs - he lists the species. I don't have my book with me, but it was monkies, not apes, I believe.
 

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Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
 
Oddly enough, Orangs are the ONLY apes native to the Asian continent.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
I thought they were limited to one island.

Now I'm going to be driven nuts until I can figure out why I thought that.
 

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Posted by beverly (Member # 6246) on :
 

quote:

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Oddly enough, Orangs are the ONLY apes native to the Asian continent.

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quote:

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"The orang-utan (Pongo pygmaeus) is the only existing Asian representative of the so-called great apes. Although in prehistoric times there were orang-utans on the Asian mainland, today they are found in just a few restricted areas of the islands of Borneo and Sumatra.

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http://www.orangutans.com/index.html
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
Thank you. That explains it.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
This thread reminds me, when Eve and I were still talking on the phone every night but hadn't gotten together since we met, we had a spirited discussion about Kipling's literary merit.

The next day, Eve sent me an email that said, "If you were my cat, I'd call you Rudyard, and I would laugh a lot."

That was the first inkling I had that we were heading into uncharted waters. Now, she does call me Rudyard sometimes, and she laughs a lot. I'm still not a cat, though, even when she makes me purr.

Dagonee
 

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Posted by bunbun (Member # 6814) on :
 
(to Dagonee)

[ February 20, 2005, 09:58 PM: Message edited by: bunbun ]
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 

quote:

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(to Dagonee)

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