The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

you are deleting words attributed Shennong. I have already removed the marked interpolations.

According to Google AI, the text you posted as being the SBJ entry as quoted by Zhenghe / Zhenglei is actually a "Frankenstein" and "badly scraped" portion of some other encyclopedia;  It specifically cites "Xinxiu Bencao (新修本草, 659 CE)—the famous Tang Dynasty Imperial Materia Medica—or its structural twin, Tao Hongjing’s Bencaojing Jizhu (本草經集注, 500 CE)". 

ChatGPT adds that the Zhenghe / Zhenglei has multiple nested layers of quoted text, and that text you posted seems one of the higher layers, not the bottom-most one (the SBJ)

Of course both may be hallucinating.  But can you please check again your source, to see whether you really stripped away all the later additions and commentary?

According to Google AI and CharPT, there is indeed a portion of that SBJ entry that is quoted in the ZHB/ZLB as part of the SBJ text but is missing from my version: it is a comment （東門上者尤良） after 头:［主］殺鬼. That whole sub-entry reads "head: kills demons (those from above the eastern gate are especially good)".  ChatGPT  says that by 1400 no one could make sense of that comment either.  That discrepancy is not much of a problem for me because it seems that the VMS Author consistently omitted such comments, so I would leave it out anyway.

All the best, --stolfi