Upon hearing Mowgli's name you will have childhood memories refreshed in your mind, a child who lives in the jungle and can talk to animals. This fictional cartoon character belonging to Indian mythology holds a special place in the heart of everyone. Many films, stories, and cartoons have been made so far, based on Mowgli, although this cartoon character was first introduced by writer Rudyard Kipling in his incredible work "The Jungle Book stories" in 1894. But many of you may not be aware that this character of Mowgli was based on a real human being, not completely fictional.
In 1867, a group of hunters got to see a strange scene in the dense forest in the Bulandshahr district of Uttar Pradesh. They noticed that a six-year-old baby boy was sitting with a pack of wolves, but those wolves were not harming the child. That little boy was playing with the wolves in such a manner as if he was playing with humans. The hunters deemed it unnatural and decided to separate the child from the wolves by attacking them, they also set fire to the cave in which some wolves had gone and hidden. In this attack, a wolf was killed and after so many efforts, the child was taken away from those wolves. The hunters later took the boy to Sikandra Mission Orphanage near Agra so that the child could be properly cared for. But the Orphanage had no knowledge of how to handle such a child and here this boy was named Dina Sanichar.
There have been similar incidents occurred in history where human children were raised by wild animals. These kinds of children are known as feral children, who belong to humans but live in the wilderness. Dina Sanichar lived with the rest of the children in the orphanage, but he was quite different from them, he could not speak like the rest, just trying to explain his words by making sounds like animals. Sanichar behaves completely like a wolf. He used to move around like a four-legged animal using both his arms and legs. He used to drink water that fell on the ground with his tongue, he could not understand what to do when given water in a glass or cup. He sharpened his teeth by gnawing on bones like an animal. He ate only raw meat or fish as he had not even touched the cooked food in his earlier years and when the food was served, he used to eat like an animal by putting his mouth on the plate. By this behavior, it was clear that Dina had been living in the forest for a long time and that he was raised by the animals there.
People at the orphanage tried their best to teach Dina how to behave like a human again, but they did not get any success. After years of training, Dina learned to eat cooked food, but they could never change his habit of smelling like an animal before eating food. Dina was never able to learn to speak despite many attempts, he always used to make sounds like animals and tried to explain his words to people through these voices. By the age of 12, Dina had learned to wear clothes and walk on two legs, but he still slept in the same position as the wolves while sleeping. In his short life, Dina was able to learn very few human qualities and despite thousands of efforts, he failed to completely change his wild behavior. He did not make anyone his friend, he never showed any kind of affection for any human, although he had a very good friendship with a dog living in the orphanage. He loved to live and play with that dog all day long. Conversely, some bad habits like humans were also developed in Dina, such as the habit of smoking, he had become so much addicted to smoking and became a chain smoker, that eventually he died due to Tuberculosis in 1895.
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