Bagheera

Bagheera (Hindi: बघीरा / Baghīrā) is a fictional character in Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli stories in The Jungle Book (coll. 1894) and The Second Jungle Book (coll. 1895). He is a black panther (melanistic Indian leopard) who serves as friend, protector and mentor to the "man-cub" Mowgli. The word bagheera is Hindi for panther or leopard, although the root word bagh means any form of panthera and is nowadays mostly used to refer to the Royal Bengal tiger.