- published: 10 Mar 2016
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Jungle (Sanskrit: जंगल) refers to the most dense, more or less impenetrable regions within a tropical rainforest with an abundance of animal and plant life. The word jungle originates from the Sanskrit word jangala (जंगल) which referred to 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". while others have argued that a cognate word in Urdu did refer to forests. The term is prevalent in many languages of the Indian subcontinent, and Iranian plateau, particularly in Hindi and Persian.
The term jungle may still be used in technical contexts[citation needed] to describe the rainforest biome, a forest characterised by extensive biodiversity and densely tangled undergrowth including the young trees, vines and lianas, and herbaceous plants.
About 6% of the Earth's land mass consists of the ecosystems that could qualify as jungle under the common usage of the word. 57% of all species live in jungle environments. In common usage, forests of northern Thailand or southern Guangdong in China would qualify, but scientifically, these are "monsoon forests" or "tropical deciduous forests" but not "rain forests".[citation needed]
Don Quixote ( /ˌdɒn kiːˈhoʊtiː/; Spanish: [ˈdoŋ kiˈxote] ( listen)), fully titled The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha (Spanish: El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha), is a novel written by Miguel de Cervantes. The novel follows the adventures of Alonso Quijano, who reads too many chivalric novels, and sets out to revive chivalry under the name of Don Quixote. He recruits a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire, who frequently deals with Don Quixote's rhetorical orations on antiquated knighthood with a unique Earthy wit. He is met by the world as it is, initiating themes like Intertextuality, Realism, Metatheatre and Literary Representation.
Published in two volumes a decade apart, in 1605 and 1615, Don Quixote is considered the most influential work of literature from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon. As a founding work of modern Western literature, and one of the earliest canonical novels, it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published. In one such list, Don Quixote was cited as the "best literary work ever written".