About the Author

Barend Jan Terwiel was born in the Netherlands in 1941. His first visit to Thailand was in 1962. During the early 70s he spent one rainy season in a Thai monastery as a Buddhist monk. From that period dates his first book, 'Monks and Magic', which has been reprinted many times. For more than twenty years he taught Thai history at the Australian National University. During that time he wrote more than a dozen books and about a hundred articles on the history and culture of the Thais and Tai-speaking peoples in Assam and Burma. Prof. Dr. Volker Grabowsky is Professor of Thai Language and Culture (Thai Studies) at the Asia-Africa-Institute of the University of Hamburg. He is also head of the institute's Southeast Asia Department. He specialises in the history and culture of Tai peoples in mainland Southeast Asia and Southwest China.