VMs: VMS: Chinese theory, pushed against the wall...

[Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

  > [Pamela:] So, is your VMs author a person from another continent
  > who stayed close to home, or a European who does not get around
  > much? Or a well-travelled person from another contient who has
  > settled in Europe yet managed in his travels to avoid seeing any
  > sheep?

I wish could be 1/10th as sure of my views as some of our colleagues
here! I am still rather fuzzy on those issues... But if you insist in
having some answer, my feeling is that:

  1. The author was *not* an European. Some of the evidence that makes
     me think so: (1) the inventor of the alphabet did not borrow
     letters from European alphabets, as an European would probebly
     do. (Claimed resemblances are coincidental and superficial, while
     differences are many and fundamental.) (2) The scattered bits of
     Western writing show that he was struggling with the language and
     script. (3) The Zodiac illustrations indicate that he had only
     superficial knowledge of its symbols; he may have seen pictures
     of them but did not have them at hand when he wrote. (4) Apart
     from the Zodiac figures, there are only a couple of European
     symbols in the whole book, and they are crude and quationable.
     (5) The ink does not look like the standard European ink, but
     rather an attempt to imitate its color with opaque pigments
     (which is like putting a beet-and-carrot purée on your hamburger
     instead of ketchup).
     
  2. The author was studying some European language and was "into"
     European things. Some evidence: (1) the European style of the
     book and of the alphabet (small character set, kernel + ascenders
     + descenders glyph format, left-to-right writing, non-connected
     characters, word breaks, paragraph layout, etc.) (2) The Western
     dresses and buildings (Note that they could be copied from
     books!) (3) The use of European vellum and an European-style
     quill.
     
  3. He had contact with Europeans, if only through intermediaries.
     Some evidence: (1) the vellum is probably made in Europe. (2) The
     little technical details of writing an European book with
     European pen are hardly the sort of thing that one learns from
     books. (It's like eating with chopsticks, or making pottery --
     easy with a teacher, very difficult otherwise.)
     
  4. He wrote the book for European readers. Some evidence: (1) The
     VMS looks more like an overview of knowledge taken from other
     books, than a treatise of original contributions; if so, why
     waste time writing it? (2) The use of illustrated Western Zodiac
     signs to show the time of the year for an exotic zodiac . (3) The
     text on the back cover (f116v) could be a "cover letter".
     
As I have said several times on this list, the problem with this
scenario is not that it is extraordinary, but rather that it is *too
ordinary* -- that is, there are so many possibilities for the person,
time, and place, that this working hypothesis is not of much help in
"decoding" the script, and is difficult to falsify.

For example, Catholic missionaries to Asia made many converts and
sympathizers among the native scholars.  The Jesuits's strategy in
particular focused on the intellectuals, hoping that these would lead
them to the local rulers so that they could converte the country in
"top-down" fashion.

The VMS author could be one of those scholars. However his "teacher"
on things European may also have been an explorer, merchant, ship
doctor, etc..

A ship doctor, in particular, would be a plausible "client" for the
VMS, given its subject matter. (In expeditions of the time, the ship
doctor was not only physician and surgeon, but also astronomer,
geographer, and naturalist.) Suppose that this Doctor stays at some
distant port for several months, long enough to befriend a native
scholar or student, and for them to start learning each other's
language and culture. The Doctor is curious about the local medical
and astronomical knowledge, but even though he can understand the
spoken language a little, the script is a barrier he cannot overcome.
So he somehow convinces his friend to compile a summary from native
books, in a phonetic script, and have it delivered to him through 
a later ship. 

By this theory, the VMS Zodiac charts would contain data of
non-European origin, but perhaps reorganized and presented to suit the
European target audience. In particular, the local scholar drew the
European Zodiac icons and wrote the month names at the center of each
diagram only to show to his "client" the approximate period of the
year (or part of the ecliptic, or sector of the sky) covered by it.
That is, the pictures at the center of each diagram are not
astrological symbols but only astronomical labels.

Hope this answers your question. All the best,

--stolfi

PS. I keep thinking of the Chinese agricultural calendar, with 24
equal periods of 15 degrees (yes, degrees not days), starting in
February...
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