I mention that the trope maker of the stereotypical Mowgli type child (due to the geography I guess), Saturnin Farandoul, is also a probable Tarzan prototype because of his strength (after all, he's possibly, partly influenced by a probable British aristocrat being stranded in what's now Gabon as a preteen and living there for decades) as well as being an early western descendant of both Sun Wukong and Hanuman.
What also baffles me is that in a recent adaptation, his birth parents didn’t appear in the book and the 1970s tv adaptation, except for the 1913 film. He was inspired by Phileas Fogg and probably inspired Superman, Goku and so many superheroes as well, due to his frantic adventures in countries around the world. The first part of the Saturnin Farandoul Epic was all about him as an unwitting orphaned infant being abandoned on a Southeast Asian island, only to be found later by monkeys, who raise them as their own.
The trope codifier is Mowgli, largely inspired by the sad life of Dina Sanichar, a feral human raised by wolves who struggled to fit into society and died of tuberculosis in 1895. Other inspirations for him include the Bharaich, Mainpuri, Chupra, Chui and Shahjahanpur wolf boys. The Sultanpur and Awadh wolf boys were the four combined cases of feral boys in their eponymous towns as well. A sad note; wolves are gone in much of Northern India due to hunting and habitat loss.
Mowgli himself inspired many clones, with a few of which becoming legitimate stars in their own right.
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