{"book":"adl0978","page":44,"text":"would be dangerous as the Ch'iangs are against us. If the envoy\nshould go farther north, he would be held by the Huns. It\nshould be a shorter route from Shu, a route moreover which\nwould not be beset with robbers. Your Majesty has now learnt\nabout Tayuan, Tahsia and Anhsi, which are all big countries\nrich in precious things; the people lead a settled life and have\nquite similar employments as Chinese people, they are weak in\narms but treasure Chinese goods. Your Majesty has also\nlearnt about the Greater Yuehchih, Kangchu and others, coun-\ntries to their north, which are strong in arms but can be\nwon over with gifts and profits. If we should succeed in bringing\nall those countries under our tutelage through fair dealing, then\nour territory would be extended ten thousand li, our tongue\nwould translated nine times, our culture would prevail over various\nconventions, and Your Majesty's authority and prestige would\nprevail throughout the four seas.\" The Emperor willingly approved\nof what Chang Ch'ien had said and orderd him to organize\nfour envoys to issue at the same time from Chienwei in Shu\nthrough four different routes, namely, through Mang, through Shan\nthrough Hsi, and through Chiungpei. The four envoys each went bet-\nween one and two thousand li, and were blocked in the north at Ti\nand Tso and in the south at Sui and Kunming. The Kunming\npeople had no chieftains and were skilled in raiding. They repea-\ntedly waylaid and killed Chinese envoys, preventing the opening\nof the route. But it was learnt that more than a thousand li\nto its west there was a country called Tienviet where the people\nrode elephants, and that occasionally smugglers from Shu reached\nit. Thus through seeking access to Tahsia, China first came into\ncontact with Tien. Formerly China had tried to contact the southwes-\ntern tribes but had ceased to do so after spending much expen-\nses without opening the way. The efforts were resumed since\nChang Ch'ien asserted that through them China could come into\ncontact with Tahsia.\n\nAs a captain, Chang Ch'ien followed the Great General\n(Wei Ch'ing) in the campaign against Hsiungnu. He knew where\nthere were oases among the desert, thus the troops were able to\nstay out of distress. He was therefore conferred the title of the\n-6-","chars":2272,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0978/00044.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/adl0978/44","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0978/canvas/44","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."}}