The Jungle Books Trivia Quiz

Answer: frog

He is called "frog" because he is naked, with no fur.

Answer: Baloo and Bagheera

By the Law of the Jungle, if a cub's rights are disputed, he must be spoken for by two members of the pack who are not his mother and father. Baloo the Bear is allowed at the council, even though he is not a wolf, because he teaches the Law to the young cubs.

He speaks for Mowgli, and then Bagheera buys the life of Mowgli with a fat bull, newly killed, because "to kill a naked cub is shame".

Answer: By the bull that bought me

This is a reference to the bull that Bagheera paid for him.

Answer: he was born in captivity

Bagheera was born in the King's cages at Oodeypore. Then, one day "...I broke the silly lock with one blow of my paw and came away." This is the reason he pays the bull for Mowgli's life, as he has a fellow-feeling for another who was born among men.

Answer: to the Cold Lairs

Kipling's portrayal of the Bandar-log is pretty clearly a sly poke at what we would now call the "chattering classes", those who comment upon what others have done, rather than doing themselves. "We are the most wonderful people in all the jungle! We all say so, and so it must be true," "What the Bandar-log think now the Jungle will think later".

Answer: We be of one blood, ye and I

Even Bagheera is driven to call for help in the first rush of the battle with the monkeys. "...in despair (he) gave the Snake's Call for protection - "We be of one blood, ye and I" - for he believed that Kaa had turned tail at the last minute."

Answer: stones and curses

The wolf pack had cast him out because he was a man, and now the village casts him out because he is a wolf. From here on Mowgli hunts with no pack, just Grey Brother and the Three.

Answer: Hathi

Hathi had, years before, razed a village in revenge for being caught and wounded in a trap. He only insists that there be no killing. "My tusks were red at the sack of the fields of Bhurtpore and I would not wake that smell again."

Answer: the white cobra

He had been put into the chamber years before "...that I might teach death to those who came to steal."

Answer: Kaa

Kaa had, many years before, seen a stag leap off the cliffs above the hives of the bees into the river, and live.

Answer: bees

Mowgli leads the pack of dogs over the openings of the beehives, and then leaps to safety in Kaa's coils below. He is not stung because he had coated his body with garlic, which the bees dislike.

Answer: No

Before he dies he tells Mowgli "Go to thine own people".

Answer: Yes

"In the Rukh" is told from the point of view of Gisborne, the English Forest Officer. A grown-up Mowgli appears in his section of jungle, takes a wife, and settles down as a sort of forest ranger with the help of Grey Brother and his other litter-mates.

This story is from "Many Inventions", 1893, and therefore was probably written before the stories in "The Jungle Books" which were first serialized in "St. Nicholas" magazine starting in the summer of 1893.

Answer: On Greenhow Hill

"Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" is probably the most famous non-Mowgli story in "The Jungle Books". It is the tale of a little mongoose who defeats two cobras.

Answer: Edgar Rice Burroughs

He was referring, of course, to "Tarzan of the Apes". Kipling himself was inspired in a way by something he had read in childhood. "...a tale about a lion-hunter in South Africa who fell among lions who were all freemasons, and with them entered into a confederacy against some wicked baboons. I think that, too, lay dormant until the "Jungle Books" began to be born." (This, and the above quote, from "Something of Myself", 1937).