The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Is there anything I can help with?

Hello Chenxiang! Thanks for the offer! I surely would welcome some help!  

I don't speak any Chinese.  I studied Japanese for about one year and learned a couple dozen hanzi, but that is not much help for this investigation.  Although the kind of help I need may be hard even for Chinese speakers...

The general hypothesis you are discussing is: you think it might not be a cipher, but rather a European who traveled to China, listened to Chinese doctors reciting medicinal herbs, and then used his own invented alphabet to record the Chinese pronunciations as "dictation notes"? Is this what you mean? Did I understand that correctly?

Yes, but there is more.  The main hypothesis now is that the last section of the Voynich Manuscript (VMS), the "Starred Paragraphs"section (SPS) is a transcription of the Shennong Bencao Jing (SBJ), read mostly hanzi by hanzi in some currently unidentified monosyllabic language and written down in an alphabet and spelling that the VMS Author devised for that purpose.  

The evidence for that claim includes a good match between the lengths of the SBJ recipes and the parags of the SPS, but mostly the occurrence of certain key words in some SPS parags at positions that match corresponding key characters in certain recipes of the SBJ.  Like, a daiin often occurring where a 主 occurs.

I now consider the SPS = SBJ claim proved.  The Dictation story is only my best guess as to how it could have come about.

To be more precise, the claim is that the SPS is a transcription of the SBJ as it was quoted in large white-on-black characters in printed editions of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that were available around 1400 CE, wherever the Author was.  

I will later describe in more detail what I am doing and what are the hurdles I have.

All the best, --stolfi