The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Does the Chinese theory allow for the possibility that the author knew and could read the characters, but simply created a different system for writing them?

If the author lived for a few years in the place, he probably picked up a few dozen basic Chinese characters.  But, AFAIK, to read a modern Chinese newspaper one needs to know between 2000 and 5000 characters.  Chinese students reach that level at the end of high school, learning a couple hundred characters per year.  Medical books like the Shennong Bencao use many specialized and old characters that not even a normal Chinese speaker can't read.   

Therefore, it is highly unlikely (to put it mildly) that the Author could read those medical books himself.

In any case, the book was clearly intended for sale or some other exchange, as there is no longer any point in bringing an unreadable book to Europe.

The Author possibly expected to get some benefit from bringing that book to Europe.   Maybe he was a doctor himself, and hoped to learn some new remedies.  Or maybe he just imagined that doctors back home would be very interested.

Anyway, I believe that hist goal at first was just to get the book in a form that he could understand, to the extent that his knowledge of the spoken language would allow.  The VMS we see today is not the result of that Dictation exercise.  It is a cleaned and edited version of his notes, that he prepared in Europe.  Perhaps in the hope of selling it to an interested doctor or scholar. Perhaps as a legacy for a disciple or heir.   

All the best, --stolfi