Mowgli is a fictional character and the protagonist of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book stories. He is a feral boy from the Pench area in Seoni, Madhya Pradesh, India, who originally appeared in Kipling's short story "In the Rukh" and then became the most prominent and arguably the most memorable character in the collections The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book (1894–1895), which also featured stories about other characters.