Re: VMs: Voynich manuscript - Manchu solution claim by Z Banasik

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Luis,

At 23:40 07/05/2004 -0400, you wrote:
> A few months ago I noticed some odd resemblance
> between Voynichese and some early Mongolian
> manuscripts that kept popping up in Ebay (of all
> places!). It just seemed too farfetched so I didn't even
> mention it here...

Well, Zbigniew Banasik talks about "pre-Manchu": however, from Gertraude 
Roth Li's account, this seems unlikely, as Manchu was deliberately created 
in 1599 by two of Nurhaci's courtiers, who (broadly speaking) adapted and 
formalised Mongolian script to be able to write down the spoken Jurchen 
language. The original written Jurchen had been lost by 1444, and there 
doesn't appear to have been any other written version of Jurchen language 
before 1599 (Chinese appears to have been used for government, accounting, 
etc during that period).

"pre-Manchu" would therefore seem most likely to be "pre-1600 Mongolian" - 
perhaps you and Zbigniew have simply noted much the same orthographic 
similarities?

Personally, this is all too far out of my comfort zone to go much further, 
but there are plenty of pages (especially on the Pentaglot Dictionary, 
compiled by the Qing in the 17th-18th century) to read if you're interested:-
        http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~corff/im/Buch/Pentaglot.html
Nice comparison between scripts on the first page of that site:-
        http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~corff/im/Buch/Pentaglot-1.html

> Perhaps this would account for the considerations in
> favor of the Chinese theory?
> A 'Marco Polo' connection with the VMS author?

Let's not get too excited too quickly, there are plenty of similarities 
with other things too... :-)

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling..... 


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