Tabaqui

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Tabaqui is a fictional golden jackal character featured in Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli stories collected in The Jungle Book.

Tabaqui is an archetypal villain sidekick of Shere Khan the tiger.

He is portrayed as one of the most cunning animals in the jungle, but he also is sucking up to everyone and is generally not very friendly, except for his fake politeness. He feeds on scraps from either Shere Khan or the wolves of the Seeonee Pack.

Tabaqui likes to play tricks on the other characters. He is smart, knowing what's going on, and is the bringer of gossip, which is one of the things that makes him unpopular.

A quote from the book describes him from the beginning, where he enters the Wolf Den:

"It was the jackal — Tabaqui, the Dish-licker — and the wolves of India despise Tabaqui because he runs about making mischief, and telling tales, and eating rags and pieces of leather from the village rubbish-heaps. But they are afraid of him too, because Tabaqui, more than any one else in the Jungle, is apt to go mad, and then he forgets that he was ever afraid of any one, and runs through the forest biting everything in his way."

("Madness" is the Jungle's word for hydrophobia.)

He appears in the beginning of the book, visiting Mowgli's adoptive parents, Mother and Father Wolf, and they are clearly annoyed by his presence, since he announces that Shere Khan the tiger is hunting in their territory.

Tabaqui is killed by one of Mowgli's 'siblings', Grey Brother, who crushes his back.

[edit] Meaning of name

His name is supposedly from an Indian language that can be translated into "dish-licker"

Also possibly from the Turkish word tabak, meaning "dish"

[edit] Trivia

In the movie The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story, Tabaqui is portrayed as a Spotted Hyena.