I'm trying to arrange my DVDs in order of when they are set, and I was just wondering, when is the Jungle Book set? The book was written in 1892, but that seems too modern for the setting shown in both films.
1 Answer
The events of the movie could really happen any time in the past 1000 years. I looked at the books for a mention of technology that would help place the events in time..
Tiger, Tiger recounts the events that happen after Mowgli enters the human village. In it is mentioned a musket.
It was the village club, and the head-man and the watchman and the barber, who knew all the gossip of the village, and old Buldeo, the village hunter, who had a Tower musket, met and smoked...
Looking up Tower musket I found:
Judging from this material, your rifle is a British Enfield 1853 pattern rifle-musket that was made or assembled at the Tower of London, England, in 1860. The crown denotes British government ownership.... It was well made and deadly accurate. https://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2014/3/11/tower-enfield-musket/
A British firearm makes sense in India of the 1800s. A man in a poor Indian village would not have had a valuable or late model rifle.
Also supporting this are the man made ruins where the monkeys live. If these events happened 1000 years earlier or in prehistoric times I don't think the ruins would have looked like they did.
I conclude that the events of the written story probably happened about the time they were written in 1892.