The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

A quick update on the 'SPS = SBJ' claim -- that the Starred Parags section of the VMS is a transcription of the Shennong Bencaojing, a very old (>2000 yrs) Chinese materia medica.

For the past month I have been trying to get further matches between SBJ entries and SPS parags.  

As I noted before, I was very lucky with the "red rooster" and "flying squirrel" entries because they were extreme outliers of the parag size distribution, and the former had no less than seven occurrences of the critical keyword 主 ("mainly for", "main uses", etc.). 

But all other SBJ entries are in the fat part of the histogram, therefore length alone is not enough information to find the matching pairs.  Moreover the rooster entry showed that the Author of the VMS omitted certain fields that made no sense outside of Chinese medical theory (like the nominal "flavor" and "warmth" of the remedy) or outside China (like the habitat of the plants); or uses that were not medicinal (like "the grubs that grow in chicken poop are good  for fattening pigs")  

So I must look instead for multiple occurrences of 主, and find parags of the SPS that have occurrences of daiin or its attested variants with the right distances between them.  Fortunately the fields that may be omitted are at the beginning or end of the entry; very very rarely in the middle.

But there are only a few SBJ entries with two or more occurrences of 主; none with more than three.  Most entries have only one, and several have none.  Moreover, as I noted before,  there are only 243 SPS parags that I can use, because the other estimated 122 either were in the missing folios or were smashed together in three "superparags" with multiple stars each.

Still, I managed to match a few more pairs with confidence.  And I think I got two more "cribs" that should make the search quicker and more reliable from now on.

气 qì = chedy

Chinese medical theory is heavily based on the concept of "qì"   (the pinyin "q" is pronounced like "ts" but with the tongue father back,  maybe like the "ch" in german "ich").  IIUC, it is some impalpable fluid, sort of a "vital energy", that is supposed to flow from the "middle" 中 (the "digestive center", stomach and spleen) to other parts of the body.  Many diseases and conditions are explained as the 气 not flowing, flowing too much, flowing in reverse, flowing to the wrong place, etc.  For instance, severe cough is supposed to be the result of the 气 flowing up from the 中 towards the lungs, rather than down as it should. 

Thus naturally that character is used all over the SBJ. I count 303 occurrences in 242 entries entries (out of 363 total entries). 

I now believe (with almost certainty) that the "translation" of 气 in Voynichese is chedy. Modulo perhaps eventual spelling errors, like cheda.  The word "chedy" (without prefixes or suffixes) occurs 210 times in my file of the SPS, in 146 entries.  The word cheda occurs 92 times, and chedo 3 times, or 305 times total.  Extrapolating for the missing pages (by the factor 26.2/22.6) , the original number of chedy should have been  ~250, and chedy+cheda+chedo should have been ~360.  Thus, while my matching results support 气 being mostly translated as chedy or cheda or perhaps other variations, not all of the chedys and chedas are 气 (like not all daiins are 主)

久服 jiǔ fú = qokaiin

Many "remedies" are also "tonics" that can be taken indefinitely as "health supplements" for various benefits, like extending life or keeping the skin smooth. The list of such benefits is often preceded by the keyword 久服 ("prolonged taking"); or, in the case of foodstuffs, 久食 ("prolonged consumption"). 

The keyword 久服 occurs 132 times in my SBJ file, and 久食 occurs 7 times, spanning 138 entries. The hanzi 久 occurs 145 times (since it also occurs in the name of some chronic conditions) while 服 occurs 139 times, and 食 occurs 30 times.

I belive (not quite certain yet) that the keyword 久服 maps to qokaiin in the SPS. The word qokaiin occurs 117 times times in my SPS file.  Scaling by the factor 25.6/22.6, that gives the estimates ~138 for qokaiin in the original SPS.  Again, this "translation" seems to work in the matches that I have identified so far.

I am not clear yet on whether qokaiin means 久服, or just 久, or just 服; and whether it may also mean 久食 or 食.

It is possible that some 久服 or 久食 map to just okaiin without the q.  The word okaiin occurs 85 times in my SPS file.  And there may be some fraction of spelling errors, like those seen in the 'rooster' entry; namely, substitutions of glyphs by other glyphs with similar shapes, such as ykaiin, odaiin, okair, 

All the best, --stolfi