The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

So how do you know it is not a cipher?

First, there is nothing the VMS itself that remotely suggests that it is in cipher.  The only reason people even think of cipher is because of that mistaken conclusion that the language must be "European".  Once you accept that the language is an East Asian monosyllabic one, there is no reason to suspect that it may be encrypted.

Second, any complicated cipher (like the Naibbe one, or even a simple Vigenère) would be a pain to write and a pain to read.  Ciphers make sense for letters and other short documents, where the need for secrecy justifies the inconvenience.  Or for short sensitive passages in a longer document.  It seems very unlikely that one would use a complicated cipher for a whole reference book.  The examples I know of whole books written in "hard" cipher are "demos" by cryptographers like Trithemius or Raphael Mnishowski who wanted to show off their skill.  Are there any others?

And third, why would the Author want to encrypt a transcription of the Shennong Bencaojing?  The plain text in phonetic Chinese would be unreadable by anyone else in Europe without a glossary.  Even by the best cryptographers of the time.  Even by today's cryptographers, if they don't know Chinese...

One may think that perhaps he translated the SBJ to Latin (word for word?!?) and then decided to encrypt it to prevent his rivals from learning that they could connect to the cosmic intelligence by eating hemp flowers (recipe b1.6.114).  But curiously the sophisticated encryption method that he devised happened to turns his Latin text into something with all the statistical properties of a phonetic rendering of an East Asian language...

All the best, --stolfi