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

[Pamela Richards <spirlhelix@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, Jorge

Thank you for having the patience to explain your
ideas to me in more detail.

There are a few little things that still nag at me; if
the ship's doctor or a similarly knowledgeable person
requested such a document from the person native to
another country, I wonder why that person bothered to
attempt to use our Western Zodiac at all?  It's not
his area of expertise.  His native system of astrology
is.

Secondly, if that person attempted to assimilate and
describe to us our culture by providing drawings of
Western hairstyles, fashions, and buildings drawn from
books, why not also draw the signs of the Zodiac from
books?  If some Westerner had books to spare him for
this purpose, astrology was certainly well-documented
subject matter and the subject would come up fairly
routinely. 

I don't think your idea is totally implausible, and
parts of it do appeal to me.  For example, I am
beginning to wonder if as Rene suggests, we could look
at the Zodiac section as a star catalogue.  If so, and
if its scope was to be as comprehensive as possible,
the author would need perhaps some information from a
knowledgeable person who had visited or lived in the
Southern Hemisphere, to assist in completing the
catalogue of stars found in the Southern latitudes. 
But this does not require a non-Western author, rather
some expert non-Western or Weatern but well-travelled
sources for our author to draw from.

I do have a suggestion about the use of dyes in the
VMs which I'll get back to you about after I dig up my
sources.   

Thank you again for having the great patience to
explain the possible provenance your hypothesis
permits.

Warmly,

Pam

--- Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 
>   > [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...
>
______________________________________________________________________
> To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxx
> with a body saying:
> unsubscribe vms-list
> 


=====
"I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing, than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance."

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 
______________________________________________________________________
To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxx with a body saying:
unsubscribe vms-list