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+--- Thread: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against (/thread-4746.html)
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - Jorge_Stolfi - 10-12-2025
(09-12-2025, 08:33 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(09-12-2025, 07:52 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Examples of alphabets created by outsiders are the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. alphabet and possibly the Georgian Alphabet by the Armenian Medieval linguist You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.; and the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (~1830)I wasn't asking for examples of alphabets. All alphabets have been created by some people for some people and I think this would normally be a lengthy process and mostly in some teaching context and accompanied by copious notes.
Most alphabets evolved gradually over centuries or millenia. Those examples I quoted were phonetic alphabets created for a language X by an outsider who was not a member of the X-speaking people. It is still not totally like Voynichese according to the COT, but it is a good way towards it.
And you have Ricci's proto-pinyin, which is very close to the COT in many ways, including the motivation -- create an alphabetic script for a language that already had a native script, but one that was too difficult to learn. The main difference with Voynichese-according-to-COT is that it used Latin letters and diacritics, instead of newly invented glyphs.
Quote:Quote:There is tons of visible retracing, in the text and in the illustrations.I know of only two examples of retracing in the text of the MS. I've seen all the images you posted, unfortunately, to me they don't look even remotely convincing.
Well, what can I say? Okay...
But please pick a page...
Quote:Again, this is your interpretation of what is "decorative" and what are the "contents". I can name a lot of distinctively European things in the imagery. 1) European castle.
The castles in f85v2 may indeed be contents: the Author wanted them because there were castles at those places, in whatever real, imaginary, or allegorical place that map is meant to depict.
But the details that make those castles look European, as far as we can tell, are just decoration: the author's sketch probably said only "a castle goes here", and the Artist drew his notion of what a castle looked like. Or quickly leafed through his books until he saw a suitable castle, and copied it.
On the other hand, there are the six round towers at the center with bulging spherical tops that support the starry heavens. I bet you will say that that must be just decoration, right?
Quote:2) European dragon.
Yes, the format of the Herbal section of the VMS is clearly drawn from that of European herbals, and it seems that dragons in European "alchemist herbals" were usually drawn next to plants that were supposed to cure snake bites or repel snakes. We can discuss how exactly that section was created in another thread. Here, again, for all we know the Author specified only "put a dragon on this page, near the root", and then the Artist drew a dragon as he knew it, or cribbed from some book.
Quote:3) Quite European Zodiac figures 4) European cloths. 5) European hair styles.
The nymphs, the stars, and the central figures of the Zodiac are just decoration. Like the pictures of humans and animals and stars in any European astrological manuscript. Whatever information the VMS Zodiac diagrams convey, it would be conveyed just as well without any of those figures. That is, the contents of each diagram is only the list of 15 or 30 labels, the circular text, and the implied correspondence of that data with a specific Western Zodiac sign.
The drawings and labels of the bits of plants in the Pharma, and the labels on the jars, must be contents; the drawings of the jars are just decoration.
The contents of the Bio illustrations may be the obvious organs, the topology of baths and pipes, the number of nymphs in each pool and their labels, and some symbolic value to some of the the animals and objects that appear. All else in the drawings is likely to be just decoration provided by the Artist.
And so on. If we focus on the contents of the illustrations, ignoring what is probably just decoration, we see very little that could be considered specifically European. Maybe the T-O map in the Northeast rosette? Anything else?
Quote:Can you name anything of Asian origin?
I already pointed out the division of the year in 12 sets of 30 degrees or 24 sets of 15 degrees. And starting the year with Pisces. And a section with about 360 entries, without figures, of about the right number of words per entry...
Quote:I'm asking for what would it take for me to consider a theory that has basically no grounding in hard evidence.
I can't help if you dismiss any evidence I present with a generic "there may be other explanations".
The opposite of the "Chinese Origin" theory is a theory too, the "Not Chinese" theory, or specifically the "European Origin" theory. The opposite of the MRT is the "Every Ink is Original" theory. Shouldn't you demand had evidence for those theories, too?
All the best, --stolfi
"IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT" revealed at last - Jorge_Stolfi - 10-02-2026
Folks, I have finished the write-up of the "IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT" that I importantly announced a couple of weeks ago.
First, the solution to the anagram: ANIMUS NE IDEAS --> "DAIIN" MEANS "USE".
Actually, the most important part of the discovery is not new: The Starred Parags section (SPS) of the VMS is a close transcription or translation of the Chinese medical classic Sennong Bencao Jing (SBJ).
I posted this discovery to this forum a few months ago. But the evidence that I had at the time, that seemed to be pretty convincing to me -- similar histograms of paragraph sizes -- was dismissed by the flat-Earthers on duty as "mere coincidence".
What is new is that now I have much better evidence. You can jump straight to page 8 of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. (Pages 1-7 are intro and the histogram evidence again.)
As you will see there, daiin (the most common word in the SPS) corresponds quite closely to the Chinese character 主 zhǔ (the most common character in the SBJ). Strictly speaking that character has the general sense of "main" or "mainly", but seems to occur almost always in the compound 主治 zhǔ zhì which can be translated as "indications:", or "the main uses are" or "is mainly used for". The SBJ is a list of ~360 drugs and their uses; 主治 is a "key" in the rather uniform formula of the SBJ entries, that introduces the list of diseases.
All the best, --stolfi
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - Jorge_Stolfi - 10-02-2026
By the way, @Petrasti sent me a private message with a solution to the anagram. It seems that he cracked it, but he sent the solution as another anagram in German, and I think that he made a typo -- an "E" in place of a "U". But my German is microscopic, so maybe it was correct...
All the best, --stolfi
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - DG97EEB - 10-02-2026
Mike drop for Stolfi!
RE: "IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT" revealed at last - eggyk - 10-02-2026
(10-02-2026, 06:45 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As you will see there, daiin (the most common word in the SPS) corresponds quite closely to the Chinese character 主 zhǔ (the most common character in the SBJ). Strictly speaking that character has the general sense of "main" or "mainly", but seems to occur almost always in the compound 主治 zhǔ zhì which can be translated as "indications:", or "the main uses are" or "is mainly used for". The SBJ is a list of ~360 drugs and their uses; 主治 is a "key" in the rather uniform formula of the SBJ entries, that introduces the list of diseases.
Really interesting Jorge.
Out of interest, are there any other sections/recipes that match daiin as well as that one?
And do you have any suspicions for how the VMS text would have been created if this was the case? I can imagine a european attempting to transcribe chinese characters in a way that made sense to them, like something like below. (I do like how the 3 lines somewhat match..)
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - davidma - 10-02-2026
Albeit interesting, I find the case made for the daiin-zhu exchange quite weak if I have to be honest. A full coverage of the entire SBJ would have been better, the fact that daiin and zhu kinda overlap in one specific recipe is not nearly enough for me to be able to claim that the SBS is definitely the SBJ, as argued here. The only other point made is the character overlap between Chinese and voynichese (almost 1 to 1). As mentioned by the paper itself this isn't a particularly new idea, and unless a systematic analysis of the VM is conducted I really don't think this proves anything more than daiin and zhu behave similarly when looking at a specific paragraph of the VM/SBJ
RE: "IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT" revealed at last - Jorge_Stolfi - 10-02-2026
(10-02-2026, 07:45 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Out of interest, are there any other sections/recipes that match daiin as well as that one?
I haven't checked, but I expect that most well-defined parags in the SPS will. I just tried the longest entry in each file, and it worked better than I expected -- so I stopped there.
Quote:And do you have any suspicions for how the VMS text would have been created if this was the case?
My "Chinese Origin" theory is that the Author was a traveler -- probably an European, but have been an Arab, a Jew, or anything else -- who spent a few years in some East Asian country -- could have been China, but other countries like Vietnam or Burma may be even more likely. Enough time to learn the spoken language at a passable level. There he saw that they had many books of medicine, astronomy, etc which he felt that he must take back home. Maybe he had promised his scholar uncle, maybe he thought that they could be sold at a good price, who knows.
But he could not take the books themselves, nor copy them himself, because he had not learned the written language and had no hope of learning it. Especially since those "technical" books would probably be written in Chinese characters, even though they may be pronounced in the local language.
So he devised a phonetic alphabet for the language, and got a local scholar or doctor to read the books aloud, while he wrote it down. On paper, almost certainly; with no decorative pictures (jars, nymphs, etc), at most with simple sketches of roots and leaves, like those in Pharma. And in a messy format, with erasures, "this goes there" etc, as in any draft. He probably could not understand much of them himself, but hoped that he could do that back home, using what he knew of the spoken language and maybe some glossaries that he made by the side.
Eventually the Author got back to Europe -- probably north of the Alps -- and there he recruited a scribe to make a clean copy of his notes on vellum. But he was not rich, so he had to use "factory reject" grade vellum and a Scribe who could hold a pen but not much beyond that. And he gave this Scribe a bunch of illustrated books, from his library or borrowed from somewhere, to use as "inspiration" for the decorative elements. He trained the Scribe on the alphabet, but the Scribe did not understand the language -- and apparently did not understand the illustrations that he was copying, either.
As a result, I expect that the text will have a large fraction of errors. Perhaps 15 or 20% of the words may be wrong -- mis-spoken by the Dictator, mis-heard by the Author, garbled on his draft, mis-read or jumbled by the Scribe, mis-BEEEPed, mis-read or mis-typed by the modern transcriber...
But those errors shouldnot be a big obstacle to decipherment -- by someone who knows the language. Which I don't...
Al the best, --stolfi
RE: "IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT" revealed at last - MHTamdgidi_(Behrooz) - 10-02-2026
Since I had pre-judged Jorge_Stolfi as planning to make an important and clearly explained announcement, I find it necessary here to at least note how puzzled I am by all that he has shared.
Why is this not a (presumably non-AI) slop—i.e., just some computerized calculations lacking any content or historical facts or analysis, not even based on any other graphic (let alone textual) material in the Voynich manuscript?
On purely statistical coincidental grounds, not even knowing the language, he has made claims that seem utterly lacking in historical and cultural contextual justification and plausibility.
So, do we have a simple substitution here (which most had rejected as a possibility), not even ciphered (to make it less of a natural limitation)?
Even his charts do not seem to be convincing as factual evidence (all the qualifications to make them comparable withstanding)? It seems “guess” work has helped the charts quite a bit. “In the transcription files, the boundaries between those hypothetical parags had to be guessed based on dubious clues like the spacing of the lines; but they are almost certain to be wrong, because the actual breaks must be in the middle of lines. Besides those two large blocks, there are a few smaller suspicious text blocks on other pages, each being probably two or three parags merged into one. Misplacing the parag breaks would not affect the average parag size, but would affect its deviation and the shape of the histogram.” (p. 6). All this sounds like arbitrarily introducing line breaks or modifications, by guess work, to make the charts more plausible, not even knowing Chinese.
All the enormous graphics in the VM are then just made up to make the Chinese text plausible, in oddly new writing alphabet? Why would a transcription in European/invented letters make the Chinese language any more readable or usable to whoever is reading it, even transferring it to vellum? Were there no scribes to make a copy of it for the traveler to take home?
Jorge? Are you serious when you say, “There he saw that they had many books of medicine, astronomy, etc which he felt that he must take back home. Maybe he had promised his scholar uncle, maybe he thought that they could be sold at a good price, who knows. But he could not take the books themselves, nor copy them himself, because he had not learned the written language and had no hope of learning it. Especially since those "technical" books would probably be written in Chinese characters, even though they may be pronounced in the local language. So he devised a phonetic alphabet for the language, and got a local scholar or doctor to read the books aloud, while he wrote it down. …”!
Are you saying, the traveler could not find a scribe in the whole of China to simply copy the original in Chinese? Why not just have someone translate it for him? If he did not even read Chinese, how could he know the value of a purely textual manuscript? If he did, or he could have someone translate it for him, why not write it in his own language?
The Chinese text itself became available to Europe in 1700s, it seems (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). If somebody had found something of value in the original Chinese, why not just bring the original and share it in 1400s, so it could become known then centuries earlier?
Why go through the trouble of inventing a whole new transcription system to convey an “alien” language? None of this makes sense to me, sorry.
With all due respect, I wish him well in his Chinese theory development, but this has made that theory even less plausible for me.
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - dashstofsk - 10-02-2026
I hope you don't mind if I poke a few holes in your logic.
Some native speaker willingly read out a ~40,000 word manuscript? Really? Had nothing better to do? Either the author understood it as it was being recited or he did not. If he did not then what was the point of a phonetic copy? It would never have been of any use to him.
If he did understand then it would have been simpler just to write in words of his own language the meaning of the recitation. But instead of this he chose to write in an invented phonetic alphabet and then later to entrust this to someone whose ability was 'not much beyond that' of holding a pen, and who would have needed training in the alphabet, just to create a manuscript that only he himself would have been able to read? Why not just keep the paper original and spare himself the amateurish re-writing of this trainee?
He 'was not rich'? But really the only people who would have been able to travel to China would have needed to be wealthy. Either a merchant going for commercial trade, or else an emissary who had the backing of a rich patron, state or church to pay for the journey.
Writing phonetic text from speech in a foreign language is not easy. Let us try it ourselves. Go to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and choose a few sentences. Was it easy?
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - oshfdk - 10-02-2026
I actually don't see problems with the dictation and phonetic script part. If I knew spoken Chinese but couldn't read the characters, nowadays I could still write it down as the pinyin and have a chance at recovering the meaning. Maybe the Author couldn't find a satisfactory match of phonetics to their own language, so a custom script seemed like a possibility. Maybe even the script has some built in mnemonics for the vocal apparatus (say O is an open mouth, A is half closed mouth, Y is open mouth with tongue down, N, R, L are tongue configurations) this would explain why the script is not a variation of an existing script and this would not be anachronistic, comparing with Hangul designed in 1440s from scratch using similar reasoning.
As for the wealth, people get rich and poor all the time, the Author may have started out rich, but lost money during travels and the manuscript was some feeble attempt to sell or preserve the knowledge back in Europe with hardly a penny in the pocket.
It's not hard to imagine a scenario under which a manuscript similar to the Voynich MS would have been created in the way described by the Chinese theory.
If only there was a trace of some specific evidence for it. I'm not even sure what that could be, lacking any obvious oriental references in the images (I know, I know, European scribe, etc., this is again an ah hoc explanation, not a piece of evidence).
Edit: I'm not sure I understand the logic behind "daiin" = "主" claim, the match as shown doesn't seem to be very convincing, but maybe I'm missing something.