Dayuan

Common card · No. 387998

Dayuan (or Tayuan; Chinese: 大宛; pinyin: Dàyuān; lit. 'Great Ionians'; Middle Chinese dâiC-jwɐn < LHC: dɑh-ʔyɑn) is the Chinese exonym for a country that existed in Ferghana valley in Central Asia, described in the Chinese historical works of Records of the Grand Historian and the Book of Han. It is mentioned in the accounts of the Chinese explorer Zhang Qian in 130 BCE and the numerous embassies that followed him into Central Asia. The country of Dayuan is generally accepted as relating to the Ferghana Valley, controlled by the Hellenistic city-state Alexandria Eschate (modern Khujand, Tajikistan), which can probably be understood as "Greco-Fergana city-state" in the English language. These Chinese accounts describe the "Dayuan" as urbanized dwellers with European phenotypes, living in walled cities and having "customs identical to those of the Daxia" or Greco-Bactrians, a Hellenistic kingdom that was ruling Bactria at that time in today's northern Afghanistan. It is very likely that the...

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