Etymology

The word jungle originates from the Sanskrit word jangala (Sanskrit: जङ्गल), meaning uncultivated land. Although the Sanskrit word refers to dry land, it has been suggested that an Anglo-Indian interpretation led to its connotation as a dense "tangled thicket"^[1] while others have argued that a cognate word in Urdu did refer to forests.^[2] The term is prevalent in many languages of the Indian subcontinent, and the Iranian plateau, where it is commonly used to refer to the plant growth replacing primeval forest or to the unkempt tropical vegetation that takes over abandoned areas.