The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s5.187

c10.s5.187

³ Ssu-ma Ch’ien puts the Yueh-chi levy at from 100,000 to 200,000 horse-archers. But Chang-k’ien never gave such a margin of error for a people among whom he had lived; his figure for 128 B.C. was 100,000, as Pan-ku gives it, and 200,000, wherever it came from, must originally have referred to the Yueh-chi in Kan-su, before the loss of the Little Yueh-chi and of the fraction which stayed in the Lake Issykul country and the wastage due to forty-six years of fighting and trekking.