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Re: Chinese (Doubled words)




From: Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: voynich@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Doubled words
Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 13:28:41 -0200 (EDT)

I can't disprove the Chinese hypothesis: it has some plausibility
given the structure of Voynichese, but I don't think it is probable
historically.


This puzzles me: why do people generally find the idea so "improbable
historically"?

To me, the more I look into the history of contacts between Europe and
asia, the more banal it seems. Many Western European missionaries
traveled to Tibet and China by the Silk Route between 500 and 1400
BCE, and by 1368 there were estimated 100,000 Roman Catholics in
China, not counting those affiliated to the Nestorian (Syrian) church.
China itself was closed to Westerners between 1368 and 1540 (only),
but the rest of Sutheast Asia was at least partly open through that
time --- only more remote and less tempting.


I know that there was contact between Europe and South East Asia in the
relevant period. But most of the languages of Chinese type already had
their own scripts, and  Tibetan, Burmese, Thai and Khmer had alphabets
in the Indian tradition. I don't see why explorers or missionaries
would devise a totally new script and use it to write secular material.
If they wanted to communicate with Asians, they would have adopted an
Asian script, and if they wanted to keep something secret they would
not have used an Asian language. Supporters of the Chinese theory have
to tell us who was supposed to read the manuscript.

Regards

Philip Neal



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