The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Have you made any attempts to match 治 (zhì) -- or whatever token is most common after 主 (zhû) -- with vords after daiin? You mention spelling variations could be at play in the VMS, but is there a 2-vord digram family that could tentatively match 主治 in the Shennong Bencaojin? Doesn't the VMS display greater unpredictability in terms of the following word after daiin?

No, I did not look (much) for such specific correspondences. They may no be there. 

First, the SPS may be derived from a translation of the SBJ into some other East Asian language, not from the Chinese original.  In English translations of the SBJ, the compound 主治 is translated in various ways, using from one word ("indications" or "uses") to three or more ("used mainly for", "its main uses are", etc.).  Translations to other Chinese "dialects" may consistently use the same two syllables, but translations into unrelated languages like Burmese, Thai, Tibetan, or Vietnamese may used one word, or several different words, like in English.  So it is quite possible that daiin means 主治 rather than just 主.

Also there are phonetic phenomena that may confuse the issue.  In modern Mandarin, when two syllables are spoken in succession, the tone of the second can be modified depending of the tone of the first.  (Compare with the alternation of English "a" and "an" depending on the next word, or the optional omission of final "e" in Italian verbs ("cantare->cantar") for complicated reasons.) 

Should dan, dain, daiiin to be homophones/allophones of zhì to some extent?

You mean of 主 zhǔ?  The syllables "zhu", "zhù", "zhú", "zhǔ" have completely unrelated meanings.

But an important point is that the pronunciation of Mandarin has changed quite a lot in the last 600 years, to the point that poems that used to rhyme no longer do.  That is a consequence of a totally non-phonetic script.  (In contrast, the pronunciation of Italian seems to have changed little since the 1200s, because the near-phonetic spelling and the classics like the Divina Commedia effectively anchored it.)  And the Chinese "dialects", like Cantonese, have radically different pronunciations for the same Chinese characters.  In fact it seems that there is doubt whether in certain past epochs the people in certain areas spoke Mandarin or some other dialect.

That is to say that merely identifying daiin with 主治 or 主, and the SBS as a version of the SBJ,  still leaves us far from identifying the underlying language and the spelling system.

All the best, --stolfi