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The Real Inspiration for The Jungle Book Was a Boy Raised By Wolves
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May 19, 2025
Many believe that Dina Sanichar, the Indian wolf boy, was the inspiration behind Rudyard Kipling's famous work, The Jungle Book. Just like Mowgli, Dina was a feral boy raised by wolves, although his life was quite different from his fictional counterpart's. Mowgli the man-cub entranced readers with his fascinating upbringing
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The Jungle Book is a world-famous novel by legendary author
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Rudyard Kipling, as well as a two-time hit film for Disney in both animated and live-action form
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But few people realize that part of the story of The Jungle Book was inspired by the life of a real person
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a real person whose life was no Disney film. Today, we're going to take a look at how the real-life inspiration
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for Mowgli in The Jungle Book was a feral child raised by wolves
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Just like Mowgli, the hero of Rudyard Kipling's famous 1895 work, The Jungle Book
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Dina Sanachar was a feral boy raised by wolves. Dina was first spotted in the jungle by a group of hunters who witnessed him walking around on all fours
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and following after a wolf companion. Their curiosity was, very understandably, piqued, and they did their best to get their hands on the boy
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After various attempts to lure him out of the wolf den failed, they finally managed to smoke him out, along with his wolf companion
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Unfortunately, at this point, the story goes a little more like Bambi than Jungle Book
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Mother! The hunters put down the wolf. Dina witnessed the entire thing go down and, without any warning, was carried off by those same hunters
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While Mowgli was warmly welcomed into the human world by a friendly young girl
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Dina's experience was decidedly less heartwarming. The hunters brought him to an orphanage
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where missionaries took it upon themselves to baptize him. They gave him the name Sanichar, which means Saturday
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because that's the day he arrived at the facility. At the time, the mission was being run by one father, Erhard
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who is reported to have spent some time getting to know the boy. Sadly, though, Dina struggled in his new life
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and was considered an imbecile, though he did demonstrate the ability to reason
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and was noted to be occasionally keen at performing certain tasks. Most children start speaking during the first two years of their lives
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And some will even learn to say simple words like mama or dada as young as six months old
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Mom! Mom! Mom! Mommy! Within a couple years after that, they typically begin forming rudimentary sentences
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These milestones tend to coincide with other aspects of mental emotional and behavioral development Dina with his unique development history however would never learn to speak But it wasn for a lack of trying Over the course of his life multiple attempts
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were made by those around him to teach him how to talk. But it was all for naught
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The wolf boy never managed to learn a language or to write. He did, however, communicate by making animal noises
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Not surprisingly for a boy raised by wolves, Dina did not take well to human society
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He hated wearing clothes and struggled to walk on two feet, and he absolutely refused to speak a language. However, there was one uniquely
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human habit that Dina did pick up, and of course it was a bad one, smoking tobacco. He enjoyed
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smoking and quickly became addicted to it. Some believe the habit may have even led to tuberculosis
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which eventually would lead to Dina's demise. Most children start growing teeth between four and seven months old, and they usually have a
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complete set by around the age of three. Depending on precisely how young Dina was when he started living with wolves, it likely
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would have been difficult for him to consume food. Wolves are carnivores, and they tend to dine on big game animals, which usually require
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some degree of preparation to be easily consumed by humans. These early habits left quite an impression on him, though
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In fact, when Dina first arrived at the orphanage, he absolutely refused to eat any cooked food
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He liked his meat raw, and after dining, he would engage in the decidedly animalistic
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the practice of gnawing on the bones to sharpen his teeth. Those are rib bones
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After Dina was rescued, or if you prefer, captured, his new human friends tried to make him adapt to society
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by doing things that most humans do from their earliest days, such as wearing clothes
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However, while Dina eventually learned how to walk on two feet, he struggled with wearing pants and shirts
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during the two decades he lived among people. Interestingly enough, he wasn't the only feral child
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who eschewed clothing. Another boy, known as the Wolf Child of Kronstadt
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was sent to the Secandra orphanage as well. And he, too, preferred to be naked
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I think if we're all honest, pants are kind of overrated. Dina had a difficult time relating to other humans
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And while he never grew into a social maven, he did eventually form a friendship with a fellow feral child
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who lived at the orphanage According to Father Earhart the two boys had a strange bond of sympathy for each other He even reported that one helped the other to learn how to drink liquids out of a cup
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Their relationship makes a lot of sense, given that both boys had a rare experience
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that few others could even begin to imagine. They simply felt more comfortable with animals and each other
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than other humans. I totally get it. You'd think Dina's story would be a rare one
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but surprisingly, he wasn't even close to being the only wolf child to appear in India
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in the late 19th century. In 1892, a missionary found a feral child
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in the Jalpaiguri region. The following year, another one was discovered near the city of Dalsing Sari
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This child had a great appetite for eating frogs. In 1895, yet another child was located in Sultanpur
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and reportedly grew up to become a police officer. In 1898, a fourth feral child was discovered in Shashapur
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but was unable to integrate into human society despite spending 14 years with people
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Even after living with humans for a decade, Dina's mental development never really progressed much beyond
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where it was when he was found. At the age of 18, he was just over 5 feet tall
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And according to witnesses who saw him, he had very large teeth and a low forehead
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He's also reported to have always appeared anxious and jumpy, as though he was never at ease
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Dina Sanachar passed away in 1895 from tuberculosis. He is believed to have been just 29 years old at the time
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Dina was not the first child to be raised by wolves. An 1851 pamphlet titled An Account of Wolves Nurturing Children in Their Dens by an Indian
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Official, written by Sir William Henry Sleeman, actually detailed the existence of six previously
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known wolf children in India. Five of these feral children were found in present-day Sultanpur, and the other one was
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captured in what is present-day Bahraich. According to Sleeman's pamphlet, there were many wolves who lived near the town of Sultanpur
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and other areas on the banks of the Gomti River, and they reportedly ran off with a great many
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children. So maybe not the greatest place to raise a family, if you like your family
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So if you're wondering why only wolf children were found in the jungle and not wolf adults
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fret not for we have an explanation albeit a pretty grim one An explanation is probably long overdue You see it most likely that any human raised by a wolf wouldn survive past childhood There are several
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reasons for this, which include the likelihood that any such children would have eventually died
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of malnutrition or been killed by the wolves themselves or possibly even other animals. In
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the Jungle Book, Mowgli's biggest foe was the tiger, Shere Khan. And indeed, in India, there were many
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tigers who would probably find a wolf boy an easy target. Moreover, during the 19th century
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it wasn't uncommon to find people left in the jungle who were ravaged by animals
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Over the years, there have been numerous reports of feral children who were captured
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and reintroduced to society, although many of those tales were later disproven
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One of the most famous cases involved two girls named Amala and Kamala, who were reportedly eight months and eight years
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old after they were rescued in Bengal, India in the 1920s from a pack of wolves
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The man who found them, J.A.L. Singh, claimed that they howled at the moon
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walked on their hands and feet, and only ate raw meat. He attempted to teach them how to walk and talk
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Researchers were fascinated by their story and wrote books about them. However, it was later revealed that the girls
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had not been raised by wolves but were developmentally disabled and had birth defects
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While Dina Sanachar may have inspired the character of Mowgli, the Jungle Book itself had numerous inspirations and sources
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Kipling was born in India and spent the first six years of his life there, so he was familiar with the culture and their stories
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He even admitted in a letter that many of the tales were inspired by ancient Indian fable texts
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such as the Jataka tales and the Panchatantra. The latter, for example, contains an early version of the mongoose and snake story, which
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Kipling immortalized as Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. Moreover, recent evidence shows that Kipling's versions, which were first published in magazines
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between 1893 and 1894, before being collected as a single book, were actually written for
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his daughter, Josephine, who passed away from pneumonia in 1899. In 2010, a rare first edition of the book was discovered with a handwritten note on the inside
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It read, This book belongs to Josephine Kipling, for whom it was written by her father, May 1894