WikiFur:This week's featured article/Week 2, 2006



Mowgli is a fictional feral child character created by Rudyard Kipling. His first appearance was in the 1893 short story In the Rukh where he appears as an adult. This was shortly followed by Mowgli's Brothers, which became the first of three Mowgli stories in The Jungle Book. Five more stories about Mowgli appeared in The Second Jungle Book (1895). Pamela Jekel's The Third Jungle Book (1992) is a collection of new Mowgli stories in a fairly accurate pastiche of Kipling's style.

There have been several film, radio and television adaptations of The Jungle Book, nearly always concentrating on Mowgli's adventures, but almost invariably changing the story until Kipling might not have recognised the result. This is especially true of the Disney cartoon version, made in 1967, which uses the names and basic appearances of Kipling's characters but changes almost everything else.

In most of the film and television adaptations the Mow of Mowgli is pronounced to rhyme with go, although according to Kipling it should rhyme with cow. Modern adaptations always depict Mowgli wearing a loincloth or similar garment. In the original stories he is always naked except while living with humans.