The Routledge Language Family Series is aimed at undergraduates and postgraduates of linguistics and language, or those with an interest in historical linguistics, linguistics anthropology and language development. With close to 100 million speakers, Tai-Kadai constitutes one of the world's major language families. The Tai-Kadai Languages provides a unique, comprehensive, single-volume tome covering much needed grammatical descriptions in the area. It presents an important overview of Thai that includes extensive cross-referencing to other sections of the volume and sign-posting to sources in the bibliography. The volume also includes much new material on Lao and other Tai-Kadai languages, several of which are described here for the first time. Much-needed and highly useful, The Tai-Kadai Languages is a key work for professionals and students in linguistics, as well as anthropologists and area studies specialists. ANTHONY V. N. DILLER is Foundation Director of the National Thai Studies Centre, at the Australian National University. JEROLD A. EDMONDSON is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Texas Arlington and a member of the Academy of Distinguished Scholars. YONGXIAN LUO is Senior Lecturer in the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne and a member of the Australian Linguistic Society.

"For over two thousand years, jātaka--tales of the Buddha's previous lives--have been popular as teaching and entertainment. Apart from the classical jātaka from India, many other jātaka appeared in Southeast Asia and were assembled in collections known conventionally as the "Fifty Jātaka" (Paññāsa Jātaka). Once considered minor and apocryphal, they are now acclaimed as the lifeblood of the region's literature. This book offers the first published translations in English of twenty-one stories from the Thailand collection. The selections include some of the best-known Thai stories, such as Sudhana- Manoharā, the Golden Conch, and Rathasena (Twelve Sisters), among other adventurous quests, accounts of self-sacrifice, moral tales, strings of riddles, and story cycles. Here the tales are translated fully and faithfully in readable English prose with full annotation, an introduction on the background of the stories, and summaries of all sixty-one jātaka in the Thailand collection"--back cover.

A handbook on the art of storytelling, including instructions for selection, preparation, presentation, and planning.