The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[rikforto]

Jorge, this sounds bizarre to me, the author of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:

Well, apologies for that, but that bizarre story about every emperor changing the solar terms on a whim for political expediency looked a lot like a lalamo hallucination.

because that's not what I said. The process was centralized and under the auspices of the Emperor, yes, but China was heavily bureaucratized and not personally handled by him. This was not "a whim", but a serious question of how to administer both religious rite and grain storage. I suppose promulgating a new calendar as part of rebelling is "for political expediency", but I specifically say the main change is the issuer, not the calendrical contents per se, so it is a plain mischaracterization of my position. From my perspective, the main points were that setting solar terms was a legal and religious right of the Emperor, that astrologers had further philosophical cause to respect that, and that your proposed reading of the VMS doesn't solve any problem the Astronomical Bureau hadn't solved in antiquity.

This is a recurring pattern in our conversations, where you're obviously filtering what you read through your preconceptions. This is by no means comprehensive, but it does serve as good summary of why I doubt your various interpretations and identifications:

1. Using the modern, spatial definition of the solar term; in period they were temporal. This was explained in a footnote on the Wikipedia defintion you directed me to, and presumably read.
   
2. The degree controversy was largely entwined with the same hasty reading of modern evidence, but there was a separate refusal to take scholarly work on historic Chinese astronomy seriously
   
3. Using Gregorian dates to inform your reading of the Zodiac section, rather than checking period accurate ones
   
4. Ignoring that someone early in the manuscript's history thought "Mars" was a perfectly good interpretation of Pisces. (I forgot this too, kudos to eggyk)
   
5. Missing that you'd shifted the zodiac signs by 15 degrees off your interpretation
   
6. Adding to Jonas's description of Japanese literary practice that it Chinese readings are monosyllabic; my Kanji dictionary has numerous polysyllabic onyomi.
   
7. Substantially reinterpreting the text of the VMS so it better fits your theory. (I know you will contest this, but this is one of the widest points of criticism you've gotten. Assuming daiin is misspelled some 42% of the time in the short passage you are relying on to establish your cribs is tantamount to re-writing the text. This is not me demanding perfection, this is me demanding that cribs be in the VMS.)
   
8. Substantially editing your edition of the Shennong Bencao Jing to make it fit the VMS. (In the interest of fairness, this is the thing I would be most open to precisely because of some of the following points. But I do think it was done carelessly and in a way that amounts to circular reasoning, and in the wider context of this list goes to the point here that you are engaged in pervasive motivated reasoning.)
   
9. Ignoring the evidence I found describing a more troubled reconstruction
   
10. Downplaying the Ming reconstructions of the Shennong Bencao Jing that affirm the understanding in point 9
    

This is to say nothing of your pattern of just appealing to ignorance when the pressure gets too high. In particular, I am confused as to why you think I have much doubt that Japanese historically has had open syllables and a writing system to express that. I'm open to evidence to the contrary, of course, but this is a thing I'm fairly sure about. After a point, anything is possible, and in that spirit maybe some Japanese scholar was reading Chinese with an unattested Japanese accent to a man who did not know Chinese so he could record it, but it bears repeating that this does not result in intelligible text for people who do know Chinese realized through Kanbun. At some point enough of these problems have stacked up that I don't think I'm being churlish when I say that you're taxing my patience with hypotheticals.

The fact that none of this seems to be real is a huge problem. You are comparing a hypothetical version of the VMS to a late reconstruction of the Shennong Bencaojing, both of which you edited both to increase the fit, to arrive at a very loose match in a yet-unidentified language (If you dispute that it is a late reconstruction, find the supposedly common texts you based your argument on.) Your reading of the Zodiac pages proved to be mostly anachronism and not terribly internally consistent if I overlooked that. I'm less troubled than a lot of people that the supposed journey to the East left no other evidence, but the fact it's entirely conjectural and in a period when that was vanishingly rare does fairly add to the sense that this is fictitious. That you've also confidently asserted to know the directions given at the scriptorium, and more preposterously the thoughts of the "author" about the final product, has only increased my sense this theory relies heavily on your personal fanfiction about the VMS rather than a grounded look at the text. This is now starting to extend to points I've made being manipulated to make them look worse than they are.

Everywhere I've looked in your arguments I've found vapor, and your responses increasingly lack the charity I've been trying to offer you. I reserve the right to come back, but I am going step out of this conversation for awhile. I am quite sure the list above and the extensive back and forth that supports it show wide range of problems I've noticed and repeating them again will not change anyone's mind