“The Second Jungle Book” of Rudyard Kipling was published in 1895, one year after “The Jungle Book.” It is a sort of sequel, but it consists of eight individual stories, some of which are related to one another.
The first story is entitled “How Fear Came.”
Mowgli appears in the story. He is the boy who was stolen from his parent’s home by the tiger Shere Kahn and subsequently adopted by the family of wolves. However, Mowgli plays a very minor role in this particular story.
One year an exceptionally oppressive drought occurred. Hathi the elephant proclaimed the water truce. From then on, no animal was allowed to hunt or kill at the few places where water still existed. All animals could come and drink without fear of being killed – until it rained once more.
When Mowgli and a crowd of animals were gathered by a river, Shere Kahn came to drink. He boasted that he had killed a man. The assembled group thought that the tiger had violated jungle law, which strictly limited the circumstances under which a man might be killed; but Shere Kahn asserted: “It was my right and my Night.” He stated that Hathi knew that he was telling the truth.
Mowgli asked Hathi to explain. Hathi told of a time when the jungle was an ideal place. No one died. Even the tiger and the panther were vegetarians. Tha, the first elephant, was lord of the jungle. He appointed the first tiger to the position of master and judge of the jungle. The tiger became a wise and respected judge, but one day he forgot himself and impulsively killed a buck. This act allowed death to come into the jungle.
Tha returned and told the animals that Fear would be the new master of the jungle. So the animals looked around trying to find Fear. They found a hairless one in a cave and recognized that he was Fear.
The first tiger went to the cave, intending to break the neck of Fear. As he went, the branches marked his back with stripes. When he saw the hairless one, he was terrified and ran away.
The tiger was distressed by this turn of events. He also noted with sorrow that the jungle animals, which formerly held him in high esteem, now ran away in fear when they saw him approach. He appealed to Tha for help.
Tha granted him one favor. He explained that the hairless one was named Man. Though the tiger would normally be afraid of Man, each year there would be one night in which Man would fear the tiger. Tha urged the tiger to show mercy when that night arrived.
When his night arrived, the first tiger killed Man. He thought that he had killed Fear and that now things would be as they were in the beginning. However, Tha told the tiger that there were other men. By killing a man, the first tiger had taught men how to kill. The first tiger was killed by a man soon thereafter.
The second story is “The Miracle of Purun Bhagat.”
During the time of British rule in India, Purun Dass was the prime minister of a semi-independent native state. After receiving many honors, he resigned and became a Sunnyasi, a holy man who lived on alms. He now called himself Purun Bhagat. Eventually he went to the mountains and settled at a deserted shrine on the side of a mountain.
The inhabitants of the village below were delighted at the presence of the Sunnyasi and regularly climbed up to the shrine to bring him food.
One night a langur and a barasingh came to Purun Bhagat and acted very strange. Eventually the holy man realized that these animals were warning him of an avalanche that was coming down the mountainside.
Purun Bhagat warned the villagers of the impending danger. He led the people to safety on the side of another mountain. However, his life ebbed away as a result of the cold and strenuous exertion.
The third story is “Letting in the Jungle.”
Previously, Mowgli had visited a village and found Messua, who seemed to be his long lost mother, but a man named Buldeo had persuaded the villagers that Mowgli was a sorcerer. They had even persecuted Mowgli and the family that befriended him. With the help of the jungle animals, Mowgli rescued Messua and her family.
Now, under the direction of Mowgli, the animals of the jungle destroyed the crops of the villagers and destroyed their food reserves. When the villagers left, the animals demolished their homes, and jungle growth soon obliterated all traces of the former village.
The fourth story is “The Undertakers.”
The bulk of the story is a discussion in which an aged crocodile explains his feeding habits. Included in the discussion is an account of all the dead bodies that floated down the river during the Sepoy rebellion of 1857. The crocodile had plenty to eat at that time.
Thirty years had passed since the Sepoy rebellion. The crocodile had established itself as a sort of holy crocodile, and the local villagers brought it food offerings. After the foregoing conversation was finished, the crocodile went to sleep in plain sight, thinking that no attempt would be made on its life, since it was regarded as sacred.
However, a bridge had recently been constructed across the river, and the crocodile had angered the Englishmen in charge of the construction by eating a number of his workers. So he blasted the crocodile with a powerful rifle.
By chance, when this Englishman was a boy during the Sepoy rebellion, this same crocodile had nipped at his hand when he was dangling it in the water.
The fifth story is entitled “The King’s Ankus.” (An ankus is an elephant goad.)
Cold Lairs was a deserted city that had fallen to ruins. A fabulous treasure was lying in a secluded place. A cobra thought that he was the Warden of the King’s Treasure. He believed that the city was still inhabited, and faithfully guarded the riches entrusted to him.
Included in the treasure was an ankus studded with jewels. Mowgli took this ankus in spite of the cobra’s efforts to prevent the theft. As Mowgli departed, the cobra warned that the ankus was death. After showing it to Bagheera the black panther, Mowgli threw it away.
Bagheera and Mowgli later noticed that someone had picked up the ankus and carried it away. They decided to follow his trail to see if he would die as the cobra had said. They found his body with an arrow through his back.
They followed the trail of the killer and found him dead, killed by four men. They later found the bodies of these four men also. One had been killed by the other three, and the other three died from poison that their companion had put in their food before he died.
Mowgli decided to return the ankus to the cobra so that no one else would die.
The sixth story is called “Quiquern.”
This story concerns an Eskimo named Kadlu, his wife Amoraq, their son Kotuko, and a girl whom they befriended when she lost her father.
Their Eskimo village usually obtained plenty of food during winter by hunting seals, but one winter seals were scarce, and the villagers were in danger of starving to death.
The Eskimos believed that each stone was inhabited by tornaq, a sort of one-eyed woman. One day Kotuku thought that a tornaq spoke to him and promised a successful hunt.
The next day Kotuko went seal-hunting. The girl decided to go with him. They went where Kotuko thought the tornaq was leading him. However, the ice unexpectedly began to break up, and the two were in danger of drowning. They then saw a creature with eight legs and thought it was a quiquern, a supernatural figure with six or eight legs. They followed it, and it led them to a safe island.
The so-called quiquern proved to be two of Kotuko’s dogs buckled together at the neck, so that they looked like an eight-legged creature. Starvation had driven them temporarily mad. They had run away and the harness of one dog got tangled with the collar of the other.
Soon after they found a large number of seals near the shore of the island, and the village was saved. The girl became Kotuko’s wife.
The seventh story is “Red Dog,”
A large number of dholes (red dogs) invaded Mowgli’s jungle, causing terror on every hand. At the suggestion of the rock python named Kaa, Mowgli led the dholes into a trap. He ran past a hive of bees while the dholes were following him and kicked rocks into the nest as he passed. The angry bees attacked the dholes, killed many, and weakened the rest. Mowgli had stationed his friends the wolves in an advantageous position, so that they emerged victorious in the ensuing battle with the remnant of the dholes.
The eighth story is “Spring Running.”
The entire jungle developed a sort of spring fever, and no one paid attention to Mowgli, even though he was master of the jungle. Mowgli was driven by strange emotions, and sought solace by running to new places. Eventually he came to a village and encountered Messua, who was probably his mother.
One of his brother wolves came to fetch him. Messua asked Mowgli to return. He promised to do so.
Mowgli told his friends that his nature was driving him to leave the jungle and live among men. He bade them farewell.
In a movie based on Kipling’s book, Mowgli leaves the jungle because of love for a girl that he has previously met. Kipling hints at a love motive, but approaches it in an indirect fashion. When Mowgli was leaving the house of Messua and returning to the jungle, he saw a girl coming and hid in the bushes. He watched with interest as the girl walked past.
In one of the Mowgli stories in the first jungle book, Kipling mentions that Mowgli eventually married. He explains his refusal to elaborate with the words: “But that is a story for grown-ups.”
Reference
“The Jungle Books” by Rudyard Kipling; W.W. Robson, editor