The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

This does not explain the distribution of <qo> in quire 20, which is frequently paragraph initial and cannot be attaching to the right elements of serials.

In my transcription of the usable part of the SPS there are 9 (nine) parags that start with qo, out of 243.  OK, let that be "frequently".

In English, starting a sentence with "And" is considered bad style, even an error.  But in Arabic (and Hebrew, and Aramaic, and Ge'ez) that is quite common.  That is why that "error" is so frequent in the King Jacob Giacomo Iacobos Séamus Diego Jaap Jimmy Tiago James Bible: it is a literal translation of the Hebrew or Aramaic, possibly via Greek. A more natural translation would use "Then" instead of "And".

Thus, if the Author indeed inserted qos by influence of Arabic wa-, he may also have used it at the start of some recipes.  There are a few sets of consecutive recipes in the SBJ that are either distinct versions of the same remedy (like the root of aconite, which has three separate recipes depending on its shape) or are similar enough that they even repeat the same string of 5-10 characters (syllables). Maybe the Author used qo in those sets.

All the best, --stolfi