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27 books mentioned in Nestorian tablet (?)
#8
Shlama all,

Thankfully, I can read Chinese. I can finally offer something on this forum!

The characters in question are the middle two of this image:
[Image: Nestorian%20stele%20%E5%BB%BF%E4%B8%83.jpg]
Chinese reads top to bottom, then right to left. The upper character ??? means "twenty" and the lower one ??? means "seven".

The character for seven ??? appears in three other places in the stele:
[Image: Nestorian%20stele%20%E4%B8%83%231.jpg] [Image: Nestorian%20stele%20%E4%B8%83%232.jpg] [Image: Nestorian%20stele%20%E4%B8%83%233.jpg]

In contrast, we can see an example of the character for "two" ??? in three places:
[Image: Nestorian%20stele%20%E4%BA%8C%231.jpg] [Image: Nestorian%20stele%20%E4%BA%8C%232.jpg] [Image: Nestorian%20stele%20%E4%BA%8C%233.jpg]

The first thing to notice is that to convert a two ??? into a seven ??? requires someone to erase one of the horizontal strokes, extend the other, and add a vertical stroke with a hook to the right. Since this is carved into a stone, I'm not sure how one could erase strokes.

Supposing erasure is possible, the seven ??? in question is a slight bit atypical. On the monument, the characters are in a grid that lines up horizontally as well as vertically. The seven ??? character is positioned a bit high in its square area. This could be because the top stroke of a two ??? character was reused for the seven ??? character, but the same is true of the twenty ??? character above it, which is also short. Also, the seven ??? character above seems to be slightly imperfect in its vertical stroke, though a forger would have every incentive to make the change as neat and convincing as possible, unless he were of course unable to write Chinese characters with sufficient skill.

Thoughts?

See a full image of the stele by following this link
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/sinkovit/share...0stele.jpg

bar Sinko
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Re: 27 books mentioned in Nestorian tablet (?) - by bar Sinko - 02-05-2010, 06:19 AM

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