Wise Baviann, the dog-headed Baboon
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
1926
5 x 2 3/4 inches
"How the Leapard got his Spots," Just So Stories, p. 42.
Kipling's Commentary: THIS is Wise Baviaan, the dog-headed Baboon, who is Quite the Wisest Animal in All South Africa. I have drawn him from a statue that I made up out of my own head, and I have written his name on his belt and on his shoulder and on the thing he is sitting on. I have written it in what is not called Coptic and Hieroglyphic and Cuneiformic and Bengalic and Burmic and Hebric, all because he is so wise. He is not beautiful, but he is very wise; and I should like to paint him with paint-box colours, but I am not allowed. The umbrella-ish thing about his head is his Conventional Mane. [p. 42]
Scanned image and text by George P. Landow