The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

We can check the received text of the Zhenglei Bencao, in this case its own You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., and see if our Ming scholars were as incompetent as implied by the availability of this text

Please clarify this quote.  (Keep in mind that I don't know Chinese; I know only a few dozen hanzi and efw bits of the grammar -- mostly, what it doesn't have.)

I recognize the bottom five lines as an exact copy of the text that I am using, except for the punctuation.  It seems that parts of it are embedded in the top seven lines.  But, in those lines, how can I tell what is the quoted SBJ and what is Zhenglei's interpolations, without the font colors? I can see that many hanzi match verbatim, but it would help if the allegedly SBJ parts were marked off, as in the printed book...

EDIT: After mapping both texts to simplified characters, and comparing the hanzi by hand, I found that practically every character of my version (bottom 5 lines) was present in the ZLB version (assumed to be the top 7 lines), in the same order, intercalated with lots of other material.  After deleting the latter, I asked Google AI to compare the two lines.  It pointed out what it claimed to be several errors in the ZLB version, some in the book, some allegedly introduced when the book was digitized.  In all cases except the last it said that my version (which I suppose it did not know was "mine") was the correct one, more faithful to the original SBJ.  The errors it noted where:

1. Your ZLB: 女人 (woman, modern), my SBJ: 女子(woman, archaic) 
   
2. Your ZLB: 肘胵 (elbow-gizzard), my SBJ: 肶胵 (gizzard)
   
3. Your ZLB: 尿白 (white urine), my SBJ: 屎白 (white feces)
   
4. Your ZLB: 血闲 (blood leisure), my SBJ: 血闭 (blood blockage)
   
5. Your ZLB: 癎痉 (epilepsy, modern), my SBJ: 痫痓 (epilepsy, archaic)
   

It then says that both versions of the final sub-entry are wrong. The correct text (it says "according to Tao Hongjing’s compilation"), would be 
鸡白蠹：能肥脂 which it translates as "chicken[-coop] white grub: makes one's fat".  However, the same Google AI, a couple of months ago, when I asked about that sub-entry, gave a different hanzi version that it translated as "fattens pigs" and explained that it was probably some farmer who added that marginal note and it got copied into later editions.  Sigh.

There are also several other differences that,although don't change the meaning, can make a difference to my matching attempts.  It noted that your ZLB version (like the original SBJ, it claims), used only 主 to introduce a list of uses, whereas my version uses sometimes 主 ("mainly [for]") sometimes 主治 ("main uses") .  And indeed one problem I was having is that both 主 and 主治  seemed to map to "daiin" in the VMS.  But if the VMS was copied from a more faithful source, like the ZLB, then it all makes sense:  主 = daiin, always.

And it also noted that in your ZLB version there is a 主 after 鸡子 "eggs", whereas in my SBJ version there is none.  But the VMS does have a daiin there!  So now that makes sense too.

Thanks for the ZLB quote, and all the best, --stolfi