I had some time to actually dig into this this morning, and I'd like to offer both a further reason I doubt the match and also a point of entry for anyone (including Jorge) who wants to prove me wrong.
There obvious next place to look for cribs is the following and preceding paragraphs of the VMS. Unfortunately, the paragraph that Jorge analyzed is the last on a verso page, so identifying the "next" paragraph requires grappling with the construction of the VMS. We get very lucky in the preceding paragraph, however, and that is what I'd like to analyze.
Please note that I am using the traditional characters rather than the simplified ones that Jorge uses because I am unfamiliar with the PRC reforms; for the two paragraphs in question, it is exactly a one-to-one mapping and a spot check elsewhere makes me think they are identical texts aside from the character set. The way the PRC reforms work is this should have no bearing on any analysis we might like to do. This text can be found You are not allowed to view links.
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主 in the "rooster" entry and then four in a row in the "donkey-hide gelatin" entry in blue. There are other matches, but these are especially easy to work with.
(donkey hide gelatin) 阿膠 味甘平。
主治心腹內崩，勞極灑灑如瘧狀，腰腹痛，四肢酸疼，
女子下血，安胎。久服輕身益氣。一名傳致膠。
(rooster) 丹雄雞 味甘微溫。
主治
女子崩中漏
下，赤白沃，補虛，溫中，止
血通神，殺毒，闢不祥。頭，
主殺鬼。肪，
主治耳聾。腸，
主治遺溺。肶胵裹黃皮，
主治洩利。屎白，
主治消渴，傷寒寒熱。翮羽，
主下血閉。雞子，除熱火瘡，癇痓，可作虎魄神物。雞白蠹，肥豬。生平澤。
I have run into several problems extending this match along this otherwise promising line. First, as has been covered elsewhere, "治" does not have an obvious match in the "rooster" paragraph, making it hard to say where exactly
女子 starts. My best attempt, allowing for the possibility that "味甘微溫" was not in the source is as follows:
poar keeo ?
daiin qoair ar aCPHey
丹 雄 雞
主 治
女 子
The problem is less acute with
下血:
daiin oCKHhy yShey
主 下 血
The implication is that the following correspond:
女子下血 =
ar aCPHey oCKHhy yShey
Something interesting does happen under this hypothesis. I've reproduced the You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. above the putative "rooster" one in the VMS with the naive guess for where they should align in green.
tdol tor oaldar aiir okokeedy karody qoeedy sho qopchedy daiin opairam
dchedy cheey qokor otaiin otair otair okeedy taiin aiin s aiin sy
ychtaiir aiichy dol aiin otaiin aiidy okchd otar daiin
Shifted back a few you do get a y-y across a line break. It seems like a good entry point, but the following matches poorly to my estimation:
ar aCPHey oCKHhy yShey
s aiin sy ychtaiir
Anyone is welcome to play with this some more---I can imagine the case for rolling up a bit more at the end of the second line into single characters.
aiins aiinsy is a decent candidate for a two-character read as well, and you could probably cut it up differently. Ultimately, none of those look like especially good matches.
Before I abandon the match entirely, there is an internal match in the hypothesized donkey-hide gelatin paragraph:
(donkey-hide gelatin) 阿
膠 味甘平。
主治心腹內崩，勞極灑灑如瘧狀，腰腹痛，四肢酸疼，
女子下血，安胎。久服輕身益氣。一名傳致
膠。
By good fortune, the second and last should match. But the line ends with
daiin, our candidate for
主, or a homophone. In the You are not allowed to view links.
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All in all, I cannot extend the analysis on these lines.
Some stipulations and responses to anticipated objections:
- This analysis here presents compelling problems for holding the match affirmed, but is not enough to say the matter is closed. Just because I have failed to make the match---or see it---does not mean its not there, of course.
- Specifically, I am uncertain enough in how to line up the texts that other people may see something I've missed. If I the problems here don't convince you that they don't seem match, I'd be curious where you see a potential way to strengthen the match and how to make it more certain to continue checking these sorts of connections.
- It's possible that the SPS is based on a different textual tradition than the version of the SBJ we are looking at and the "donkey" paragraph is missing in the VMS version. That is still a problem for holding that the text has been identified because it is explicitly based on the argument that the SPS is a hitherto unidentified and unanalyzed text. New data may yield a new analysis, but it is incumbent on proponents of the match to provide it.
- It is possible that the SPS as we've received it has this paragraph from our version of the SBJ and it is not directly above. People are invited to find a more suitable candidate.
- It is possible that translation, corruption, or some other process has made identification of the paragraph above the claimed "rooster" paragraph impossible. That argument remains unfalsifiable, and implicitly concedes we cannot recognize the match, even if the person making that argument doesn't see it that way.
With all that in mind, I would like to reiterate: a spurious correlation between those 7 instances of
主 in the rooster paragraph and the loose family of words daiin/dain/laiin in the SPS still adequately explains the difficulties extending the match. There is no need to appeal to undiscovered versions of the SBJ, translators, dictators, L2 scribes, retracers, or any other person or force frustrating our efforts. The null hypothesis, that the SPS does not match the SBJ, is perfectly capable of explaining why we are having such difficulty mapping Voynichese to the SBJ, even if it is not uniquely capable.
