The Mugger thinks that the train crossing his river is “a new kind of bullock” that he can devour if it falls off the bridge while he lurks beneath (p. 261).

Kipling generates a more complex vision of British “progress” and the role of “law” in his celebrated story “The Miracle of Purun Bhagat.” The tale tells of the defection from civilization of the prime minister of an Indian semi-independent state; Kipling describes Purun Bhagat as embracing the British conception of progress without reserve, effecting improvements by, among other things, establishing a school for girls and making roads. For his work he wins a knighthood and other British honors. Purun Bhagat abandons his position and material possessions to live among animals outside a small village in the Himalayas. In his voyage away from civilization, law plays a pivotal role. He embarks on his pilgrimage to seek “a Law of his own” (p. 203). As in the Mowgli stories, a law discernable only to a solitary soul in nature is presented as akin to—or at least on the side of—British progress.

At the end of this story, Kipling blends his vision of this law—that of a mystical power or holiness—with a vision of British progress, and provides a slight ironic distance between the two. When a group of animals comes to warn Purun of an imminent mudslide that will destroy the hillside on which he lives, he ultimately sacrifices his life in the act of saving the villagers who live below him and who, he says, have treated him with kindness, giving him good food daily. As he descends to the village to warn the people, he is described as “no longer a holy man, but Sir Purun Dass, K. C. I. E., Prime Minister of no small State, a man accustomed to command, going out to save life” (p. 211). The story ends after Purun dies from his exertion and the villagers make him their saint. Kipling writes: “But they do not know that the saint of their worship is the ... honorary or corresponding member of more learned and scientific societies than will ever do any good in this world or the next” (p. 213). While the societies may do no good, Purun clearly does, both as prime minister and as holy man. He can only do “good” as a radical outsider in isolation from human society, in the company of animals. Kipling here defines a sphere of “goodness” or ethical action that lies outside the realm of worldly activities and concerns. It is the realm of an outsider who—like Mowgli—follows a law of his own choosing and, to follow this law, unites with unlikely chums. Purun’s story mirrors Mowgli’s in many ways. Although unlike Mowgli he abandons people rather than being abandoned by them, like Mowgli his isolation brings him a collection of animal companions, whom he dubs “brothers.” Moreover, his eyes, like Mowgli‘s, are characterized as tremendously powerful; he has “the eyes of a man used to control thousands” (p. 205). The “miracle” of Kipling’s title—akin to the wondrous nature of Mowgli’s feats—is Purun Bhagat’s communion with animals, which, the narrator stresses, is no miracle at all, only an effect of “keeping still,” and “never making a hasty movement” (p. 208). Both here and in the Mowgli stories, communication with animals leads to salvation and creates a superhuman—in one case a saint, in the other a demigod.

The ability to “do any good in this world” in “The Miracle of Purun Bhagat” and the Mowgli stories is linked to dual identity. Mowgli, like Purun, belongs to two worlds, jungle and village; he is called “the frog” by his wolf mother both for his lack of fur and for his amphibious nature. However, Mowgli is plagued by his own inward division: “As Mang flies between the beasts and the birds so fly I between the village and the jungle.