The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

That’s ONE point of view [conviction that the language is European] which, for example, doesn’t apply to me at all.

That may be your case, and that of a few others (thanks for that).  But it is evident that many people reject the Chinese theory because they think that an origin outside Europe is just absurd.

But so far, you haven’t really done that. I consider the Chinese version a possibility, but unlike you, I find the evidence rather weak—at least for now...   As I said before: Convince us with more matches and details.

I agree that the evidence I presented is not enough to convince everyone, and I owe more matches (as I promised already).

I am delaying that because if I post matches that are too uncertain or require too many aapproximations (or are just wrong), they will have the opposite effect.  

The Rooster recipe is a good example because it and parag f105v.32 are extreme outliers in the size distribution; so, if SPS is indeed a transcription of the SBJ, that parag should be te transcription of that recipe; there is no other possible candidate.  And luckily it has eight instances of the keyword 主, so the position matches with EVA versions (six daiin, two kaiin, one dain) are hard to explain away as meaningless coincidences.

But there is another (almost) uncertain pairing at the other end of the size spectrum. The (almost) shortest SBJ recipe seems to be the Flying Squirrel (FLYS) one:
  鼺鼠：［主］堕胎，令易产。［生］平谷。
The translation, according to Gemini, is something like
  Flying squirrel: [Mainly for] expelling the fetus, making labor easy. 
  Provenance: flat valleys.
Excluding the [Provenance] field (last three characters), which apparently was systematically omitted from all recipes in the SPS transcription, the FLYS recipe is only 8 hanzi long. The matching parag is therefore expected to have ~8 x 5 = 40 EVA letters.  Among the available candidate parags, there is one (f112v.35) that is 34 EVA letters long; the second-shortest one is 74 letters long. So that must be it.   It does not have a daiin at the proper place, but it has a dain:
     
(The font used by my plotting function is missing the character 鼺 which should be just above 鼠 in the plot.  Please medidate intensely until you see it with your mind's eye.)

Agreed, that is not a convincing example.  But there is another crib in that recipe: 令 = "makes", in the second item of the uses list. I am not sure yet what is its "canonical translation" in Voynichese, but based on other tentative matchings it seems to be cheody, cheydy, or some variation thereof.  And indeed f112v.35 has a chedy at just the right spot:
   

There is a complication, though: according to Gemini there is an even shorter recipe in the SBJ, with only 6 hanzi:
  铁：［主］坚肌，耐痛。
  Iron: [Mainly for] strengthening muscles, pain endurance.
(According to Gemini, that is not some iron supplement, but warm iron blocks to be applied externally to muscles.  Se non è vero è molto ben allucinato.)

The only applicable crib I have for that IRON recipe is 主, and by that criterion IRON it is a fair match to f112v.35 too:
   

So, is parag f112v.35 the transcription of IRON, or of FLYS? 

That parag has 8 EVA before the dain.  That is 2 letters shorter than expected from FLYS entry, which has has two hanzi before the 主.  But that is 3 letters longer than expected from the IRON entry, which has a single hanzi before the 主.  

I believe FLYS is the right one, because, among other things, another SBJ file (not from the ZHB) has IRON as a mere sub-entry of a larger entry that includes the entry IRFL for 铁落 = "iron forging scale" and IRES for  铁精 = "iron essence" (apparently iron oxide dust that collects in the chimney of a iron smelting funrnace).  In my ZHB file IRFL and IRON are next to each other, but I cannot tell whether they are one entry or two.  Again, I asked Gemini to clarify the situation but he could not give me a trustworthy answer.  But if they were transcribed together as one parag, that parag should be about 70 EVA letters long, hence not f112v.35

But that should give an idea of why I have not created and posted a full hanzi-Voynichese dictionary yet.  Is pched.she the Voynichese for 鼺鼠, or for 铁? Same for the other hanzi in those two recipes.  Or maybe f112v.35 is neither of those two entries, so pched.she could be anything else...

For other recipes things may be worse.  For a recipe of middling size, the expected-size criterion is passed by dozens of parags.  (For a 31-hanzi recipe, my program currently considers parags with 137 to 180 EVA letters -- and there are 98 of them).  For those recipes, my program often get several "best matches" that are all more or less plausible.  The skeptics would then argue that, with so many candidate parags, it is not remarkable to find one that matches the cribs with the allowed leeway.

Moreover, excluding the Rooster, three recipes have 3 occurrences of 主, 23 have two occurrences, and the other 340 have only one.   If someone is not convinced by the matching of the eight cribs of Rooster, it would be pointless to show them one of those.

But here is one "middling size" entry (BLAR) whose corresponding parag seems to be well-defined:

(A)  |蜂子：　　　　　|fēng zǐ:                  |Bee larva:                            
(A1) |　［味］甘，平。 |··[wèi] gān, píng         |··[Nature] sweet, neutral.            
(A3) |　［主］　　　　  |··[zhǔ]                   |··[Mainly for]                       
(A31)|　　风头，　　　 |····fēng tóu,             |····wind-caused headache,             
(A32)|　　除蛊毒，　　 |····chú gǔ dú,            |····eliminating magic toxins,         
(A33)|　　补虚羸，　　 |····bǔ xū léi,            |····repairing depletion and emaciation,   
(A34)|　　伤中。　　　 |····shāng zhōng.          |····injury to digestive system.       
(A4) |　［久服］　　　  |··[jiǔ fú]                |··[Prolonged consumption]            
(A41)|　　令人光泽，　 |····lìng rén guāng zé,    |····makes one's skin lustrous,        
(A42)|　　好颜色，　　 |····hǎo yán sè,           |····improves complexion,             
(A43)|　　不老。　　　 |····bù lǎo.               |····prevents aging.                   
(B)  |大黄蜂子：　　　|dà huáng fēng zǐ:         |Giant hornet larva:                   
(B3) |　［主］　　　　  |··[zhǔ]                   |··[Mainly for]                       
(B31)|　　心腹胀满痛，|····xīn fù zhàng mǎn tòng,|····distention, fullness, and pain in torso,
(B32)|　　轻身，　　　 |····qīng shēn,            |····lightens the body,                
(B33)|　　益气。　　　 |····yì qì.                |····boosts the vital energy           
©  |土蜂子：　　　　|tǔ fēng zǐ:               |Ground-nesting wasp larva:            
(C3) |　［主］　　　　  |··[zhǔ]                   |··[Mainly for]                       
(C31)|　　痈，　　　　 |····yōng,                 |····carbuncles,                       
(C32)|　　肿。　　　　 |····zhǒng.                |····abscesses.                        
(A5) |　［一名］蜚零。 |··[yī míng] fēi líng.     |··[Another name] 蜚零.                
(A6) |　［生］山谷。　  |··[shēng] shān gǔ.        |··[Provenance] mountain valleys.

Based on its size (44 hanzi after excluding the omitted fields), the matching parag should have about 220 EVA letters.  This entry has three 主 keywords. Using only those three cribs, my program consders the 43 parags with size in 199 to 251, and finds only one with three daiin-like strings (in fact, three daiin) at about the right places: f114r.4 (236 letters)

      <f114r.4>  badness 0.355  236 letters
                   13(+2)    0.039 fdeechdyopche
      daiin 0.000 131(-2)    0.016 ypchedyodalychedyqopcheokaiinshedypodairochedalloiinchedyqokaiinchdydaiindchdoseedolchdolkchedychokaiinchdyqoeedyokchedydaiiinchedy
      daiin 0.000  62(-2)    0.033 ykeedyokeeedychedolchdaiinykardarycheoldchedydkchsaiinchdedyqo
      daiin 0.000  15(+4)    0.267 okchedaiinchain

Here is the plot:
   
I should discuss this match more (including show what happens when I ask for more cribs) but that has to wait for the next post.

All the best, --stolfi