Seoni Jungle

The Seoni district of India is just one district of many in that immense country which fell under the rule of the British during the Victorian Age. However, it is the only one of the districts to be immortalized in the work of Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), author of _Kim_, the _Just-So Stories_, and of course the classic _The Jungle Books_. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907, Kipling's work reads today as a hymn to British imperialism to many readers. The area of the Seoni was populated by Kipling with countless animals living by the "Law of the Jungle," in a highly organized society with myths and legends of its own. Humans invariably come off worse in any comparison between the works of mankind and that of the Jungle dwellers. The area of the Seoni jungle was based on Kipling's descriptions of the region, and is a magical mysterious place where only game wardens serve as outposts of civilization and technology.

The entire Jungle Book (271k), public domain