The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[oshfdk]

YÀO YĪBǍI ÈRSHÍ is 藥一百二十,

This is interesting in a way. It is similar to modern Mandarin, but it is not the same.
1) 'Wrong' word order
2) No classifier word

Could this be because of changes in the language since 1400, or because this is not Mandarin in the first place?

I think the word order looks weird, but also these are not complete phrases, only the repeating parts. The phrases look like this:
上藥一百二十種為君...
中藥一百二十種為臣...

As for the classifiers, I once read a popular-level book about the evolution of the Chinese language from its classical to its modern form, and it went something like this:
1) Classical Chinese had very complex syllables with many different finals (-k, -t, -m, etc.) and each word was truly a single distinct syllable. Also, the reliance on the tones was not as big as it is now.
2) As different dialects of Chinese grew apart, the most variance was in the finals, so the syllable initials and the vowel were largely the same, but the finals would differ between dialects and many finals would become nulls, different in different dialects.
3) When the final consonant became silent, in many cases its effect on the preceding vowel remained, which produced much of the tonal difference. Like in English you pronounce "bat" with a higher pitched vowel than "bad", so if English dropped the final consonant, you would end up with ba1 for the animal and ba3 for the adjective (but also for words like ban, bash), using the Chinese tone notation.
4) When people with different dialects had to communicate with one another, they needed to clarify each word to make their speech mutually intelligible. So, when the other person didn't understand your syllable for "rice" you would say "rice food" or "white rice", in the hopes that the meaning would become unambiguous.
5) And this gave rise to the modern classifiers and multi syllable words and heavy reliance on tones.

But I have to say it again, this was not a technical book, so this account can be in part folk science and folk etymology.