{"book":"adl0978","page":35,"text":"the Hsiungnu envoys more than the Han envoys who were made\nto pay for what they needed.\n\nIn Tayuan and the nearby countries to its east and west,\npeople used to make wine with grapes. The rich stored wine up\nto ten thousand Shih (100 litre) and more, and the wine remained\ngood for scores of years. The people there were fond of wine,\nand the horses fond of clover. The Han envoys brought their\nseeds, and the Emperor began to have clover and grapes grown\non fertile land. When later many heavenly horses were brought,\nand many foreign envoys came to China, grapes and clover were\nplanted all around the guest houses, as far as the eye could go.\nAlthough the countries from Tayuan westward to Anhsi differed in\ntheir tongues, yet they had similar customs and generally\nknew each other's tongue. The people had deep-set eyes and much\nmoustache and beard. They were skilled in trade and very\nparticular about small amounts of money. They had great respect\nfor women. Husbands made decisions according to what their\nwives said. There was no silk, nor lacquer. The people there did\nnot know how to cast ironware. It was only after being taught\nby stray soldiers from Han that they learnt to make iron weapons.\nWhen they got gold and silver from Han, they usually made\nit into utensils and not into coins.\n\nAmong the many Han envoys, some ill-advised ones coun-\nselled the Emperor that there was in Tayuan a very good steed\nwhich the King of Tayuan had hidden in the city of Erhshih\nand refused to offer to the Han envoy. Being fond of Tayuan\nhorses, the Emperor hearing this grew covetous and dispatched Guards-\nman Chuling and others taking a thousand pieces of gold and a\ngold statuette of a horse to the King Tayuan to ask for the steed in\nthe city of Erhshih. Tayuan had plenty of Han products, its elders\npondered that Han was far away, and among the desert and\nsalt water on the way here many had died; that to the north\nof the route there were the Huns and to the south there was\nno oasis and often for long stretches there were no cities and\nno food to be found; that the Han envoys often started as\ngroups of several hundred men but when they arrived more than\n- 15 -","chars":2172,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0978/00035.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":51,"title":"Tāyān : faṣl-i 123 Shī Chī yā asnād-i tārīkhī تايان : فصل ١٢٣ شى چى ىا اسناد تاريخى","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0978/35","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0978/canvas/35","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/books/adl0978/","source_pdf":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/pdf/adl0978_download.pdf","rights":{"image":{"statement":"Public domain. NYU states: \"All works presented on this website are, unless otherwise indicated, in the public domain. The images available on this website may be freely reproduced, distributed and transmitted by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial.\"","uri":"http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/","holder":"New York University Libraries","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/about.html","delivery":"Images are served from a copy mirrored by this project, not from NYU's servers, under the reproduction terms above.","endorsement":"This is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by New York University."},"text":{"statement":"Machine-generated transcription, dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. No warranty of accuracy: see the provenance block on every page.","uri":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/","holder":"Steps Ventures"}},"provenance":{"text_produced_by":"gemini-3.1-pro-preview","thinking_level":"low","read_completed":"2026-08-09","per_page_confidence":null,"per_page_confidence_note":"Not recorded during the corpus run. No calibrated per-page score exists, and none is estimated here.","human_reviewed":false,"accuracy_context":"Roughly two thirds of characters agree with a modern printed edition of the same text. Much of the disagreement is editorial, not misreading. Treat the transcription as a finding aid and read the page image before quoting.","primary_source":"The page image. The text is an index into it."}}