{"book":"adl0978","page":47,"text":"Chang Ch'ien personally visited the following countries: Tayuan,\nthe Greater Yuehchih, Tahsia and Kangchu, and gathered informa-\ntion about other five or six big countries nearby. He reported to\nthe Emperor the following:\n\nTayuan was situated to the southwest of Hsiungnu and about\nten thousand li to the exact west of the Han capital. The people\nwere settled down and tilled the land. They grew rice and wheat in\ntheir fields and produced grape wines. The country was rich in good\nhorses which sweated blood and were the off spring of a heavenly horse.\nThere were walled cities and houses. The country encompassed more\nthan seventy countries, big and small, and had a population of seve-\nral hundreds of thousands. Its troops were armed with bows and\nspears, and included cavalry units. To its north was Kangchu, to\nits west the Greater Yuehchih, to its southwest Tahsia, to its north-\neast Usun, and to its east Hanmi and Yutien. All waters to the\nwest of Yutien flew west into the West Sea (Aral Sea), and all\nwaters to its east flew east into the Salt lake. The Salt Lake ran\nunderground Southward and its water emerged to form the\nsource of the Yellow River. Yutien was rich in jade and other\nprecious stones. The River flew into China. There were Louland\nand Kushih which had walled cities and were on the shores of the\nSalt Lake. The Salt Lake was 5,000 li away from Changan. The western\npart of Hsiungnu was situated to the east of the Salt Lake and\nstretched up to the Great Wall in western Lung, and its southern\npart neighboured on the Ch'iang tribes across the Han path.\n\nUsun was about 2,000 li away to the northeast of Tayuan. It\nwas a nomad people engaged in animal husbandry and had the same\ncustoms as the Huns. It had several tens of thousands of archers\nwho were warlike and therefore willingly paid allegiance to the\nHuns. When later it grew in strength, it gathered its own subject\ntribes and refused to pay further homage to the Huns.\n\nKangchu (Sogdiana) was about 2,000 li away to the northwest\nof Tayuan. It was a nomad people and had similar customs as\nYuehchih. It had between 80 and 90 thousand archers. It was\n- 3 -","chars":2143,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0978/00047.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/adl0978/47","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0978/canvas/47","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."}}