Character guide

Mowgli

major

Also known as the Frog, wise little Frog

Mowgli belongs to the Seeonee wolf pack by Mother Wolf's defiance and Baloo's teaching, yet he is always the man-cub, marked as different by his hairless skin and clever hands. He loves the jungle with a fierce, impatient heart, but his restlessness and pride — the very traits that let him weave huts and outwit the Bandar-log — also make him a target for the tiger who claims him as his own. His struggle to belong in a world that keeps reminding him he is an outsider drives the opening arc, from the Council Rock to his first flight into the villages of men.

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

major

Also known as Rikki, Rikki-tikki, the valiant Rikki-tikki

Rikki-tikki arrives in the garden as a half-drowned stranger, and within a day he has made enemies of Nag and Nagaina, the cobras who rule the grass and have already eaten Darzee's fledgling. His mother fed him on dead snakes, so his fear burns off fast, but he is still young enough to bite too briefly and leap clear when an older mongoose would have broken a cobra's back. His quarrel with the snakes turns a quiet bungalow into a battleground, and his loyalty to the family that dried him off gives the early story its bright, quick pulse.

Kotick

major

Also known as little Kotick

Kotick is the odd one out on the breeding-grounds, a white seal among the gray, and his questions about where the holluschickie are driven each year earn him ridicule from the older bulls. What he sees in the killing-pens turns his restlessness into a stubborn, lonely purpose: to find a shore where the seal-people can live unafraid. His search carries him past sea-cows and forgotten islands, and his refusal to accept the way things have always been makes him the moral center of the story's middle chapters.

Bagheera

major

Also known as Red Flower Bagheera, O Bagheera

Bagheera is the panther who speaks for Mowgli at the Pack Council, paying for the man-cub with a freshly killed bull and never quite letting him forget the debt. He is sleek, sardonic, and unsentimental where Baloo is soft, but his steel-blue talons and quiet warnings — 'except his own tribe' — show a protector who sees further than the bear's bruised affection. His willingness to challenge the wolves on Mowgli's behalf gives the early story its sharpest tension between law, love, and the price of belonging.

Kala Nag

major

Also known as Nag

Kala Nag is the great tusker of the elephant-lines, obedient to a boy who has ridden him since before he could walk, and patient under the ankus his masters' fathers wore smooth. He is caught between the dull safety of barracks life and the wild pull of the hills, where the smell of free elephants drifts on the night air. His bond with Little Toomai — and the secret he carries about where elephants dance — makes him the hinge on which the story's wonder turns.

Toomai

major

Also known as Little Toomai

Little Toomai is the boy of the elephant-camp, useful as three men in the keddah and happiest when the hills smoke with rain and nobody knows where they will camp that night. His father Big Toomai wants the flat roads and bazaar of Cawnpore, but the boy wants the wild drives, the misty mornings, and the secret Kala Nag keeps. His hunger to see the elephants dance — a thing old hunters say no man has witnessed — sets him on the path that will earn him his name.

Baloo

supporting

Also known as old Baloo, fat old Baloo

Baloo is the Seeonee pack's teacher, the one who makes Mowgli memorize every verse, water-law, and courtesy owed to bees and bats. He loves the boy but rules him with a heavy paw, and his exasperation flares when Mowgli runs off to the Bandar-log, whom he calls lawless outcastes. His refusal to warn Mowgli about the monkeys is the flaw that sets the story's first great rescue in motion.

Shere Khan

supporting

Also known as Khan

Shere Khan is the jungle's loudest grievance, a cattle-killer whose limp and burned paws make him a bully rather than a hunter. He claims Mowgli by right of the kill he never made, and his roar at the cave mouth is answered by Mother Wolf's defiance, which shames him into retreat. His grudge against the boy drives the pack's division and gives the early arc its central threat.

Kaa

supporting

Also known as old Kaa, O Kaa

Kaa is old enough to have seen generations of jungle politics, and his stillness unnerves even Bagheera, who knows the python's reputation. He helps Baloo and Bagheera rescue Mowgli from the Monkey People, not out of affection but because the Bandar-log's chatter offends him. His cold, deliberate power shows Mowgli that the jungle's allies are rarely gentle.

Akela

supporting

Also known as the Lone Wolf, O Akela, Wolf

Akela has led the pack for a year, scarred by wolf-traps and once left for dead, so he knows men's ways better than most. He presides over the Pack Council where Mowgli must be claimed, and his even voice holds the wolves to the Law even as Shere Khan's faction grows restless. His leadership is the fragile order that Mowgli's presence will test.

Nagaina

supporting

Nagaina is patient, venomous, and utterly without sentiment, a mother-to-be whose eggs give her a reason to hate the household that killed Nag. She stalks the veranda and the bathroom, waiting for the moment when the man, the woman, and the boy are all within reach. Her vendetta turns the garden into a killing ground and forces Rikki-tikki-tavi into his most desperate fight.

Teddy

supporting

Also known as the Emperor Theodore

Teddy is the child at the center of the bungalow household, the reason his parents keep the garden and the reason the cobras want it cleared. He feeds Rikki, carries him, and names him, treating the mongoose as a pet while the real war is fought under the melon-bed and in the bathroom. His innocence raises the stakes of every strike Nagaina plans.

Father Wolf

supporting

Father Wolf hunts by the Law of the Jungle and grumbles when Shere Khan's noise ruins a night's stalk, yet he is the one who carries the hairless baby home between jaws that could crush an egg. His instinct to pounce collides with something stranger—the child looks up and is not afraid—and he lays it among his own cubs without a scratch. His quiet decision to shelter Mowgli sets the pack's central quarrel in motion.

Tabaqui

supporting

Also known as little Tabaqui

Tabaqui survives by running errands for Shere Khan and by knowing exactly which compliment will make a mother wolf uneasy. The wolves despise him for eating village rubbish and telling tales, but they fear him too, because he is the jungle creature most likely to go mad and bite everything in his path. His cheerful delivery of the news that Shere Khan has shifted hunting-grounds is the first crack in the pack's peace.

Darzee

supporting

Darzee belongs to the garden's bird population, a creature of song and fuss whose domestic life is directly threatened by Nag and Nagaina. When Rikki-Tikki-Tavi arrives, Darzee's willingness to act as a decoy and watchman turns his ordinary bird anxieties into useful courage. His role shows how even the smallest voices in the garden matter when the cobras move.

Sea Catch

supporting

Also known as old Sea Catch, Old Sea Catch

Sea Catch is a massive, scarred veteran of the breeding rocks, bleeding from twenty places and nearly blind in one eye after a season of battling for room by the sea. He refuses to eat for four months on the beach, which sours his temper, and he will not retreat to quieter shores because he refuses to look afraid. His stubborn pride and his son Kotick's inherited stubbornness drive the story's search for a safe island.

Petersen Sahib

supporting

Also known as Sahib

To Little Toomai, Petersen Sahib is the greatest white man in the world—the head of all the keddah work, the man who catches elephants for the Government and whose notice can make or break a mahout's family. He is a distant, almost mythical authority whose operations draw the Toomai family into the jungle each season. His presence raises the stakes when Little Toomai slips between the elephants and is seen.

Buldeo

supporting

Also known as old Buldeo

Buldeo holds court among the graybeards with stories of spirits and moneylenders reborn as beasts, and he expects the village boys to keep silent while their elders speak. Mowgli's blunt correction—that the tiger limps because he was born lame—leaves Buldeo speechless and vengeful, and the headman's suggestion that Mowgli go herding is the first step in the village's rejection of him. Buldeo's wounded pride and superstition make him a persistent adversary.

Gray Brother

supporting

Also known as Gray

Gray Brother belongs to the litter that Mowgli joins in the cave, one of the young wolves who grow up alongside the man-cub as a sibling rather than a rival. His loyalty is the quiet kind, tested whenever Mowgli's place among the Free People is questioned and the pack's patience wears thin. He matters because he turns the abstract idea of brotherhood into something Mowgli can actually lean on when the jungle's welcome starts to fray.

Mother Wolf

supporting

Also known as Wolf

Mother Wolf rules her den with a mother's ferocity, and when the lame tiger Shere Khan comes whining for the child, she answers him with bared teeth and a threat she fully means. Her tenderness toward the bold, hairless cub sits beside a ruthless readiness to fight anything that threatens her litter. She sets the story's central question in motion: whether the jungle can make room for a creature that was never meant to belong there.

Big Toomai

supporting

Big Toomai has spent a lifetime among elephants, and he speaks of them with the authority of a man who has earned their trust rather than commanded it. The sahibs and overseers treat him as a tool, but his real allegiance is to the animals, and that loyalty shapes how he raises his son. He anchors the human side of the elephant stories, showing what it costs to love creatures that other men see only as labor.

Matkah

supporting

Also known as gentle Matkah

Matkah raises Kotick among the crowded rookeries, patient with his endless questions and firm when he strays too far from the shallows. She carries the memory of the men who come for seals, and her caution gives her pup the fear that eventually turns into purpose. Her quiet devotion is the emotional ground beneath Kotick's long search for a place his people can be safe.

Chuchundra

minor

A timid muskrat who lives in the bungalow and warns Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.

Rann

minor

Also known as the Kite

A kite (bird of prey) who carries messages across the jungle.

Machua Appa

minor

An experienced elephant catcher who leads the keddah operations.

Sea Vitch

minor

A grumpy old walrus who lives on the beach and argues with Sea Catch.

Rama

minor

A buffalo owned by the village that Mowgli tends in Tiger! Tiger!

Karait

minor

A small but deadly brown snake that Rikki-Tikki-Tavi kills early on.

Limmershin

minor

A winter wren who tells the story of Kotick to the narrator.

Patalamon

minor

Big Toomai's friend and fellow elephant driver in the keddah.

Messua

minor

A village woman who believes Mowgli is her lost son Nathoo.

Dick Cunliffe

minor

Also known as Dick

A young British soldier who owns a pet mongoose in Her Majesty's Servants.

Ikki

minor

A porcupine who appears briefly in the jungle scenes.

Kerick Booterin

minor

Also known as old Kerick

A Russian fur seal hunter who captures Kotick and his family.

Pudmini

minor

A female elephant who is part of the keddah herd.

Zaharrof

minor

Also known as old Zaharrof

A Russian fur seal hunter who works with Kerick Booterin.

Hathi

minor

A wise old elephant who tells the story of how the tiger got his stripes.

Mang

minor

A bat who appears in the jungle as a minor character.

Purun Dass

minor

A former prime minister who becomes a holy man in the mountains.