The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

How reliable are the definitions of the characters for daiin and chedy? I mean that these words are among the most common (daiin is the most frequent) words in VMS. They could just as easily be compared to any other common word from another text. And why can’t we match other characters from the recipe, knowing the arrangement of the characters daiin and chedy?

Not all daiin are 主, and not all chedy are 气.  But indeed 主 and 气 are very common characters in the SBJ.  

The character 主 = "mainly [for]" is used to introduce the list of conditions that the remedy can treat; thus there should be at least one 主 in every entry.  Some entries contain two or more sub-entries, and each should have its own 主.  The "Red rooster" recipe has eight 主; the matching SPS parag f105v.32 has five daiin (not counting the variants like dair, kaiin, etc.), four of which match the positions of four 主.  (The modern Mandarin reading of that character is zhǔ in pinyin, which, according to my faithful lalamo, would sound close to "joo" or "ju-oo" in English spelling.  But Mandarin itself has changed a lot in the last 600 years.) 

The character 气 stands for a theoretical concept of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) that has no adequate translation in English.  It is some impalpable fluid or essence that was thought to be produced by the "digestive center" (stomach and spleen) and flowed to other organs and muscles, enabling them work.  I have been translating it as "vital energy", but there are other equally unsatisfactory translations.  Many pathological conditions are attributed to anomalies in the flow of 气; for example, whooping cough seems to be explained as the 气 flowing up towards the lungs instead of down.  Many tonics are said to "boost the 气" or otherwise benefit it.  About 2/3 of the recipes in my file have at least one 气; the "Red rooster" recipe is one of the 1/3 that lack it. (The character is read in modern Mandarin as pinyin qì, which should sound like "chee" in English spelling.)

All the best, --stolfi