The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

With some numbers this looks more interesting to me. However, I don't see this as 6 near coincidences. The total number of entries is the obvious optimization parameter. You wouldn't even consider comparing Voynich stars section with a manuscript of 30 entries or a tome of 3000 folios. If I understand it correctly, the similar number of entries was one of the things that attracted your attention to the Chinese MS. If VMS had 30 entries, there would be another Chinese (or Arabic or Hindi) piece of interest with 30 entries and maybe a different origin story.

Yes, and if you find such a manuscript, please let us know.

Indeed I came to this hunch when I was surf-searching for Chinese medical texts, and noticed that the SBJ had about the right number of entries and right length of each entry.

But, besides those and the other statistical similarities, what makes the SBJ a strong candidate is that it was widely known and available in the whole the Chinese cultural sphere (including countries that have never been under Chinese control); and, if someone asked a doctor anyhwere in that area "what is the most important medical book you have here", the answer would very likely have been the SBJ.

Also, you decided to remove section titles from bencao, if I understand it correctly. Were they a later addition and not part of the original work?

All I know is that the SBJ that exists today is a version that was said to have been "expanded" around 1400 CE, and (IIUC) somewhat reorganized.  IIUC the expansion included separating the "recipes" into mineral (Google's "Jade"), vegetable, animal, etc.  Which is what those subsection titles seem to be.

But indeed maybe there were section titles in the original SBJ too.  Descriptions of the original only mention the division into 120/120/125 entries.  So perhaps 3 of those 4 "titles" in the SPS are the headers of those original sections.  But the first two are on the same page (f105r) only a dozen recipes apart; and there seems to be no title at the start of the SPS (page f103r)....