The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

You had said that you found a term in a recipe re red rooster, that matched a vms word which appears to occur at the same frequency, and that sounded very promising. Can you show this correspondence visually with whatever copy you are using and the starred paragraph you have linked with it

The Shennong Bencaojing (SBJ) entry <b1.4.096>,72 hanzi:

           3 　　 丹雄鸡
        1 12 主　 崩中漏下赤白沃补虚温中止丹雄鸡
        1  8 血　 通神杀毒辟不祥头
        1  3 主　 杀鬼肪
        1  3 主　 耳聋肠
        1  7 主　 遗溺肶胵裹黄皮
        1  4 主　 泄利屎白
        1  8 主　 消渴伤寒寒热翮羽
        1  1 主　 下
        2  2 血闭 鸡子
        1 10 主　 除热火疮痫痉可作虎魄

The entries in the third column are the "crib" keywords in the entry: 主 = "mainly for", 血 = "blood", 血闭 = "amenorrhea". The fourth column are the characters between those cribs.  So the whole entry is "丹雄鸡: 崩中，漏下，赤白沃。补虚，温中，止血，通神，杀毒，辟不祥。头：..."  The first two columns are the character counts in the other two columns.
 
The Starred Parags Section (SPS) parag <f105v.32>, 371(+6) EVA letters (excluding punctuation)

              8(-7) poarkeeo
  daiin      63(+2) qoaiinaracpheeyqoeedeodyqokaiinqotedaiinaporaiinapylsheodytaiin
  oteey      42(+1) oteeoolotaiinokeeyqokaiinoraiiinaldalsheeo
  daiin      17(+1) chsdqokeeeydaiino
  kaiin      22(+6) otaiinchedaiinolkallkl
  dain       34(-1) doeeokcheeoltaiinotcheedychoraiino
  daiin      19(-1) chedyotaiinalkaishd
  laiin      45(+4) sheodokeeodyqoaiinytaiinotaiinchdaldydaiiinch
  daiin       6(+0) ockhey
  ysheyckhy  10(+0) sheoqoeeol
  kaiin      52(+1) chsokoltchdysheeeyokaiinaraildycheodyoaiiinainokshey

The entries of the first column are the substrings of the VMS entry that are claimed to correspond to the cribs in the SBJ entry as parsed above.  That is, it is claimed that the first 主 corresponds to the "daiin" after "poarkeeo", the first 血 corresponds to the "oteey", the second 主 corresponds to the "daiin" after "dalsheeo", etc.  

The entries of the last column are the strings between those cribs. That is, "poarkeeo" would be the transcription of 丹雄鸡, "qoaiinaracpheeyqoeedeodyqokaiinqotedaiinaporaiinapylsheodytaiin" would be the transcription of 崩中漏下赤白沃补虚温中止丹雄鸡, and so on.

Here is a graphical presentation of the data above:
   

The numbers in the middle column are the counts of EVA letters in the last column, and the error of that count compared to the prediction based on the chinese character counts.  Thus, for example, the 63(+2) on the second lines says that the string"qoaiinaracpheeyqoeedeodyqokaiinqotedaiinaporaiinapylsheodytaiin" is 62 EVA letters, which is 2 letters more than expected given that 崩中漏下赤白沃补虚温中止丹雄鸡 is 12 characters, and on average the VMS text has a little over 5 EVA letters for each Chinese character.

In this entry, the eight 主 characters correspond to daiin, daiin, kaiin, dain, laiin, daiin, and kaiin.  This variation is assumed to be due to inconsistent transcription of spoken "Chinese" syllables by the Author and/or confusion by the Scribe when reading the Author's draft.  I have explained before how an EVA d can be mistaken by an EVA k or l in sloppy handwriting.

The mere fact that the cribs (and variants) occur in the SPS text is not remarkable.  What is remarkable is that the gap lengths -- the distances between the cribs -- in the two texts are so close to proportional.  And not just in this recipe, but in many others. 

In this recipe, the largest gap length discrepancy is before the first 主, where the SBJ recipe has 丹雄鸡 = "red male chicken" (3 characters) while the SPS has just "poarkeeo" (8 letters, 7 short of the predicted 3 x ~5 = 15 rounded down).  

The second-largest gap length discrepancy is between the 3rd and 4th 主, where the SBJ has  耳聋肠 or "耳聋。肠：" = "ear deafness. Intestines:" (3 characters)  and the SPS has "otaiinchedaiinolkallkl" (22 characters, 6 more than the expected 3 x 5 = 16 rounded up.)  Those errors are equivalent to about -1.4 and +1.3 Chinese characters.  

All the other gap length discrepancies are less than 5 EVA letters, that is, less than 1 Chinese character.

All the best, --stolfi