The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

hope that you will eventually have a consistent model that translates larger sections.

Well, I already have a translation of the whole Starred Parags section.  But I know nothing about the language, other than those three cribs and that the words map to Chinese characters mostly one-to-one. And the parags seem to be jumbled, and finding the matching pairs is not easy.

The recipes were not numbered in the original Shennong Bencaojing, and the Chinese did not have the notion of "alphabetic order" as we have and use now.  It was not like Culpeper's Herbal, but more like the Alchemists' Herbal.  Thus different editions of the SBJ reordered the recipes as the editor felt was more logical. I got two digital versions from the internet, and they are in very different orders.

Moreover, I suspect that, when taking dictation of the original, the Author wrote down each recipe (or every few recipes) on a separate piece of paper, and did not bother to number those pages; so that they got scrambled before they were put to vellum.  

Then the bifolios of that VMS section were scrambled when the book was bound...

But is it supposed to be a native Arabic speaker who transcribed a Chinese text phonetically in China, and that then turned up in Europe?

The best and most comprehensive geography treatises of the antiquity were written by Arab travelers, and were well-known in Europe.  In 1400 a Muslim would be extremely unwelcome in France, England, or north of the Alps; but Spain and Portugal were part of the Islamic Empire, and Muslims would be tolerated in other parts of Europe, including some places in Italy (like Venice, maybe).  However, an Arab who converted to Christianity should be accepted anywhere in Europe. 

But there were also many great Jewish travelers, and Jews did live everywhere in Europe at the time.

When the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama reached India by sea for the first time, he was surprised to find a Polish Jew living there, with some status in the local court.  Eventually this guy agreed to go back to Portugal with Vasco, and along the way he converted to Christianity and was adopted by Vasco as his son, with the name Gaspar da Gama. Gaspar was valued in the Portuguese court for his knowledge of languages, including several of India.  

In 1500, when the crown sent a small fleet to retrace Vasco's route, Gaspar went along as interpreter.  The expedition went way off course (maybe intentionally) and ended up "discovering" Brazil.  Gaspar tried to talk to the "indians" who came to the shore, but they did not understand any of the "indian" languages he tried.  The ship's scribe noted in his report that it must have been because of the noise of the waves. 

But, anyway, note that the VMS illustrations only tell us that the Scribe was probably from Europe. They don't imply that he was in Europe when he penned the book.

All the best, --stolfi.