The Third Jungle Book after the first half of "Mowgli's Brothers" when the infant Mowgli is being taught jungle law and customs, and end after the events of "In the Rukh", when Mowgli is married and raising a child but still keeping in touch with his animal friends. Some of the stories are inspired by Kipling. "Where the Elephants Dance" is based on Kipling's "Toomai of the Elephants", while "The Mad Elephant of Mandla" and "Jacala, Tyrant of the Marsh" are both based on single sentences in Kipling's "Red Dog" in which Kipling mentions some of Mowgli's adventures that he did not intend to
The Jungle Book and class are mapped out in the stories, contributing to "an imagining of Englishness as a site of power and racial superiority." Nyman suggested that "The Jungle Book"'s monkeys and snakes represent "colonial animals" and "racialized Others" within the Indian jungle, whereas the White Seal promotes "'truly English' identities in the nationalist allegory" of that story. Swati Singh, in his "Secret History of the Jungle Book", notes that the tone is like that of Indian folklore, fable-like, and that critics have speculated that the Kipling may have heard similar stories from his Hindu bearer and his Portuguese "ayah" (nanny) during