Many in childhood admired little Mowgli, who grew up in a pack of wolves and became the leader of the jungle, and dreamed of repeating his fate. But what few people know is that a story like Mowgli happened in real life - with an Indian boy who lived in the 19th century. True, she was by no means so fabulous …
In the history of India, there were many wild children found by people after they were raised from infancy by animals - panthers, dogs and even chickens. Wolf Boy Dina Sanichar is perhaps the most famous of them.
In 1872, a group of hunters in the territory of the modern state of Uttar Pradesh found a feral boy in the jungle running with a wolf pack. He walked only on all fours and followed the wolves everywhere. The hunters decided to take the boy away from the animals and when the whole group disappeared into the hole, they set the hole on fire. After the wolves and the boy ran out of there, the hunters killed the wolves and took the child with them.
The hunters took the boy to an orphanage, where he was baptized and given the name Sanichar - "Saturday" in Urdu - in honor of the day of the week when he entered the orphanage. Sanichar brought many headaches to the shelter staff. The boy, who appeared to be about six years old, was of very low intelligence. Father Earhart, the head of the orphanage, argued that the boy was "undoubtedly feeble-minded - an imbecile or an idiot," although, in his opinion, Sanichar sometimes "showed signs of intelligence and could be truly intelligent." However, despite all the efforts of the educators, Sanichara was never taught to speak, read and write.
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Sanichar communicated with others using animal sounds and continued to move on all fours, despite all efforts to teach him to walk on two legs.
Over time, Sanichara was able to learn how to walk on two legs and even put on clothes, but he hated them, discarding them at the first opportunity and continuing to walk naked.
When Sanichar first arrived at the shelter, he refused to eat cooked food, agreeing only to raw food, and regularly sharpened his teeth on a stone. Nevertheless, despite the scarcity of his human traits, Sanichar managed to befriend another boy. His friend was also raised by animals, so the children understood each other. The elder even taught the younger to drink from a cup.
One of the few human habits that Sanichar managed to acquire was smoking. Subsequently, experts who studied the wolf boy believed that it was because of smoking that he developed tuberculosis.
Over the years spent with people, Sanichar even outwardly failed to fully acquire human features. He was very alert, his stature was very small, his teeth were unusually large, and his forehead was low.
Dina Sanichar died of tuberculosis in 1895. He was 29 years old.
Around the same years that Dina Sanichar was found, four more wild children were found in India. One of the most famous is the case of two girls, Amala and Kamala. They were taken from a pack of wolves in the 1920s. Those who found them claimed that the girls ate only raw meat, walked on all fours and howled at the moon.
Rudyard Kipling was inspired by the Indian stories of wild children to write The Jungle Book, which tells about the adventures of Mowgli.
Unlike Mowgli, Dina Sanichar did not leave the jungle of his own free will, and, despite all the efforts of the people around him, he could not fully become a man.
Dina never managed to get comfortable in human society, and never felt comfortable in it.
In a sense, he remained in the jungle for the rest of his life.