{"book":"adl0978","page":45,"text":"king's image. They wrote by cutting in leather in horizontal\nlines. To its west was T'iaochih, and to its north were Yentsai\nand Lihsien.\n\nT'iaochih was several thousand li to the west of Anhsi and\nbordered on the West Sea (Mediterrnean Sea). It was hot and\ndamp there. The people tilled the land and grew rice in their\nfields. There was a kind of large bird which laid eggs as big\nas jars. It was a populous country with many chieftains. It was\nsubject to Anhsi and made to serve as a colony. The people\nwere skilled in magic. The elders of Anhsi heard of the rumour\nthat there were in T'iaochih the Weak River and the fairy\nPrincess of the West, but never saw them.\n\nTahsia was more than 2,000 li to the southwest of Tayuan\nand south of the Wei River. The people were settled and had\ncities and houses and similar customs as Tayuan. They had no\nking but often only small chieftains over the counties. Their\ntroops were weak and afraid of war. The people were skilled in\ntrade. When the Greater Yuehchih moved westward and defeated\nthem, they became a subject people. They were a big nation,\nnumbering more than a million. Their capital was called the\nBlue City where there were peddlers selling various goods. To its\nsoutheast was Hindu.\n\nChang Ch'ien said: \"When I was in Tahsia I saw bamboo\nsticks of Chun and cloth of Shu (Szechuan). I asked them how\nthey got these. The people of Tahsia said that their countrymen\nbought them in Hindu. Hindu is several thousand li to the\nsoutheast of Tahsia. The people are settled and have similar\ncustoms as Tahsia. The land is low, and the weather damp\nand hot. In battle the people ride elephants. The country is\non the Big River (the Ganges). I calculate that, as Tahsia is\ntwelve thousand li to the southwest of Changan, and Hindu in\nits turn is several thousand li to the southeast of Tahsia and\nis getting goods from Shu, then Hindu is not very far from\nShu. If our envoy to Tahsia should go through the Ch'iangs, it\n-5-","chars":1968,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0978/00045.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/adl0978/45","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0978/canvas/45","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."}}