The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Most elements of the drawings are clearly just decoration. The choice or European-looking ladies with light hair was a decision by the Artist (with or without input from the Author) determined only by the intention of making those diagrams "look nice".

If you would be kind enough to share your source on the artist's intentions, I will be happy to concede the point. I was not aware anything of this nature was in the public record.

First please point out any astrological or astronomical treatise, from any place or time, that explicitly informs the reader hat the 360 degrees of the Zodiac actually look like 360 women with blond hair and European hairdos, each holding a star by its stem -- and not, as an unwary reader might naively think, like Chinese women with straight black hair holding the stars with chopsticks, or like winged monkeys with scimitars and trumpets hanging from the stars by their tails.  

The 360 degree division of the ecliptic was the standard way to do Astronomy in Greece two centuries before the birth of Christ, and proved so influential it is still the main way astronomy is conducted in the modern world. The Zodiac was perfectly commensurate with this, with each sign being assigned, definitionally, 30 degrees well before it came to Europe.

As I wrote, the division of the Ecliptic into 12 sectors of 30 degrees was not unknown in Europe.  But the common practice (to this day) was to equate each sign with a certain period of 30 or 31 days.

By contrast, the 360 degree division was not adopted in China until later, about two centuries after the Voynich was supposed to be written. What was current was You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. An arc did not have 360 degrees in China in 1420.

From that book, p. 551:

• Early in the Yuan dynasty (1267), the Persian astronomer Jamal aI-DIn, of Maragheh observatory, brought a number of astronomical instruments to Beijing as a gift from Hiilagii Khan (or his successor) to Kubilay. These devices, which included a celestial globe and an astrolabe, are described in chapter 48 of the Yuan shi. Because they were designed for ecliptic measurements (rather than equatorial) and were graduated into 360 degrees, they attracted little attention among Chinese astronomers such as Guo Shoujing. Throughout much of the Yuan dynasty, there were Arab astronomers at the court of Beijing. Afterward, when the Ming dynasty was established (1368), an Islamic astronomical bureau, known as..."
  

And also check You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. The division of the Ecliptic into 24 sectors of 15 degrees (not days) was a common concept (not just knowledge of a few astronomers) from before 400 CE at least.

Pisces only has 29 nymphs

And it has 31 starts. Both surely were mistakes by the Scribe (like in other pages where he omitted a couple of stars).  And the Author did not mind, because both nymphs and stars were just decoration.  The meaningful information contents of each Zodiac page was only the text, the approximate position of those 30 (or 15) degrees in the Western calendar and/or Western Zodiac, and the ordered list of 30 labels.  Now, guess how many labels there are in the Pisces diagram?

All the best, --stolfi