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+--- Thread: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against (/thread-4746.html)
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - Jorge_Stolfi - 24-08-2026
(23-08-2026, 05:34 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You had said that you found a term in a recipe re red rooster, that matched a vms word which appears to occur at the same frequency, and that sounded very promising. Can you show this correspondence visually with whatever copy you are using and the starred paragraph you have linked with it
The Shennong Bencaojing (SBJ) entry <b1.4.096>,72 hanzi:
3 丹雄鸡
1 12 主 崩中漏下赤白沃补虚温中止丹雄鸡
1 8 血 通神杀毒辟不祥头
1 3 主 杀鬼肪
1 3 主 耳聋肠
1 7 主 遗溺肶胵裹黄皮
1 4 主 泄利屎白
1 8 主 消渴伤寒寒热翮羽
1 1 主 下
2 2 血闭 鸡子
1 10 主 除热火疮痫痉可作虎魄
The entries in the third column are the "crib" keywords in the entry: 主 = "mainly for", 血 = "blood", 血闭 = "amenorrhea". The fourth column are the characters between those cribs. So the whole entry is "丹雄鸡: 崩中，漏下，赤白沃。补虚，温中，止血，通神，杀毒，辟不祥。头：..." The first two columns are the character counts in the other two columns.
The Starred Parags Section (SPS) parag <f105v.32>, 371(+6) EVA letters (excluding punctuation)
8(-7) poarkeeo
daiin 63(+2) qoaiinaracpheeyqoeedeodyqokaiinqotedaiinaporaiinapylsheodytaiin
oteey 42(+1) oteeoolotaiinokeeyqokaiinoraiiinaldalsheeo
daiin 17(+1) chsdqokeeeydaiino
kaiin 22(+6) otaiinchedaiinolkallkl
dain 34(-1) doeeokcheeoltaiinotcheedychoraiino
daiin 19(-1) chedyotaiinalkaishd
laiin 45(+4) sheodokeeodyqoaiinytaiinotaiinchdaldydaiiinch
daiin 6(+0) ockhey
ysheyckhy 10(+0) sheoqoeeol
kaiin 52(+1) chsokoltchdysheeeyokaiinaraildycheodyoaiiinainokshey
The entries of the first column are the substrings of the VMS entry that are claimed to correspond to the cribs in the SBJ entry as parsed above. That is, it is claimed that the first 主 corresponds to the "daiin" after "poarkeeo", the first 血 corresponds to the "oteey", the second 主 corresponds to the "daiin" after "dalsheeo", etc.
The entries of the last column are the strings between those cribs. That is, "poarkeeo" would be the transcription of 丹雄鸡, "qoaiinaracpheeyqoeedeodyqokaiinqotedaiinaporaiinapylsheodytaiin" would be the transcription of 崩中漏下赤白沃补虚温中止丹雄鸡, and so on.
Here is a graphical presentation of the data above:
The numbers in the middle column are the counts of EVA letters in the last column, and the error of that count compared to the prediction based on the chinese character counts. Thus, for example, the 63(+2) on the second lines says that the string"qoaiinaracpheeyqoeedeodyqokaiinqotedaiinaporaiinapylsheodytaiin" is 62 EVA letters, which is 2 letters more than expected given that 崩中漏下赤白沃补虚温中止丹雄鸡 is 12 characters, and on average the VMS text has a little over 5 EVA letters for each Chinese character.
In this entry, the eight 主 characters correspond to daiin, daiin, kaiin, dain, laiin, daiin, and kaiin. This variation is assumed to be due to inconsistent transcription of spoken "Chinese" syllables by the Author and/or confusion by the Scribe when reading the Author's draft. I have explained before how an EVA d can be mistaken by an EVA k or l in sloppy handwriting.
The mere fact that the cribs (and variants) occur in the SPS text is not remarkable. What is remarkable is that the gap lengths -- the distances between the cribs -- in the two texts are so close to proportional. And not just in this recipe, but in many others.
In this recipe, the largest gap length discrepancy is before the first 主, where the SBJ recipe has 丹雄鸡 = "red male chicken" (3 characters) while the SPS has just "poarkeeo" (8 letters, 7 short of the predicted 3 x ~5 = 15 rounded down).
The second-largest gap length discrepancy is between the 3rd and 4th 主, where the SBJ has 耳聋肠 or "耳聋。肠：" = "ear deafness. Intestines:" (3 characters) and the SPS has "otaiinchedaiinolkallkl" (22 characters, 6 more than the expected 3 x 5 = 16 rounded up.) Those errors are equivalent to about -1.4 and +1.3 Chinese characters.
All the other gap length discrepancies are less than 5 EVA letters, that is, less than 1 Chinese character.
All the best, --stolfi
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - JoJo_Jost - 24-08-2026
(24-08-2026, 04:38 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.And not just in this recipe, but in many others.
Could you show us some other examples like that, then?
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - ololololo - 24-08-2026
Maybe, if I manage to find a comparison with a conventional Tibetan herbal, will I be able to draw any conclusions? As I understand it, the Shennong Bencao is simply a guide to remedies, describing what needs to be done and what ingredients are involved.
Can we use the recognized hieroglyphic words in relation to Botany/Pharmacy?
And why are you only providing this recipe and not any others?
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against - Linda - 24-08-2026
Ololololo, I think Jorge provided this one because I asked about it specifically.
But yes I would like to see more correlations too, it seems to me that if this were correct, that the rest can be figured out through comparing the various possibilities. Like poarkeeo would seem to mean red male chicken... I think I have seen poar before in a spot where red might actually make sense...
I just checked Voynichese and it looks like there are only 2 more instances of poar, one at the beginning of another starred paragraph, and I think also (Voynichese does not count it, I think because of scribbling, but it still looks like a P) at the beginning of what would be the Asia or water section of the inverted TO, depending on which style it is supposed to emulate. Red Sea? Qualifies both for Asia boundary, in the correct place, at the border of Africa and Asia, and also as water that is connected to a greater sea to the south. Does red come up again in the SBJ?
Also it would seem to me that if one was transcribing things, it would be in the order found in the original. Does it work out that the paragraphs before the red rooster paragraph also align, all the way back to the beginning of the recto of that page? (I think the red rooster paragraph is at the bottom of a verso, so going forward, or backward past the recto, is a little harder if the pages are out of order like they seem to be in several quires, but it seems like you could figure it out if the matches were found).
Just looking for previous info to remind me...
Quote:68712-07-2026, 05:54 AM (This post was last modified: 12-07-2026, 05:54 AM by Jorge_Stolfi.)
The evidence for SPS≈SBJ, specifically, includes the crib position matches (主 <-> daiin, 气 <-> Chedy, etc) in about 35 recipe-parag pairs (~50%) of 67 that I have tried to find. Considering that 4 pages are missing and a few dozen SPS parags were merged by the Scribe into mega-parags with unknown boundaries, the success rate could not be more than ~67%. Some of those 35 matches are somewhat strained or uncertain, especially when they have only one or two cribs, or the SPS keywords are "spelling variants" like kaiin or dain for daiin. Any one of these, by itself, could argued to be mere coincidence. But others just cannot be coincidences. The latter include the 7-crib match between the longest SBJ recipe ("red rooster") and the longest non-mashed-up SPS parag (f105v.32).
Quote:58812-06-2026, 11:19 PM (This post was last modified: 12-06-2026, 11:38 PM by Jorge_Stolfi.)
(12-06-2026, 10:18 PM)Linda Wrote:
What are [your cribs]?
For sure: 主 = "mainly for" --> daiin (but sometimes dain, kaiin, laiin, dair; or abbreviated as dam).
Almost sure: 气 = "vital energy" --> chedy (but sometimes cheda, cheky, shedy, ...)
The former (zhǔ in modern Mandarin) almost always introduces the list of diseases that the drug is good for. The latter (qì in modern Mandarin) is a fundamental concept of Chinese medical theory: some sort of energy or impalpable fluid that IIUC) carries the energy of food from the stomach and spleen to the lower abdomen and maybe other parts.
The other cribs are still to uncertain to list. Please wait until I can confirm them...
...
Quote:I am now going through the ~60 recipes that I had already tried to match, updating their Chinese text to the ZHB version, and then looking again for matching parags. I am about halfway through those 60. Then there are another ~300 that I have not tried yet...
How are your investigations going? You were saying that your copy was not matching, that was the same thing I had noted with the one I found, although perhaps i was not accounting for spelling variations as you seem to allow for, and i am afraid i don't know which one i was looking at, at the time. Which one are you using now? Do you have a link you can provide?