“Who says we have no clothes?” Undergarments and the poetics of disrobing in the Anda Qin Airs

Abstract

The Airs manuscript held by Anhui University (hereafter Anda Airs) indicates that by the late Warring States, the Odes was approaching fixity; none of its odes are absent from the transmitted Mao Odes, and although there is evidence for significant variance at many levels, its stanzas were relatively stable units. This paper explores how reorganizing those units might affect narrative in the Airs, by comparative reading of the transmitted Qin Airs ode “No clothing” (Wu yi 無衣; no. 133) against a fragment preserved in the Anda Airs manuscript. I argue that the inverted stanzaic sequence and added lines of the Anda version constrain the narrative such that the ode’s interpretation must have differed significantly from the transmitted version. Moreover, the example presents a model for reconsidering the ontology of seemingly dubious “ironic” interpretations of individual odes. 安徽大學所藏《邦風》竹書表明，至戰國晚期，《詩》的形態已趨於穩定。安大簡所收「邦風」詩篇無一佚出傳世《毛詩》，同時，儘管這些詩篇在多個層面上與傳世版本呈現顯著差異，但其內部章節已經形成相對穩定的單元。本文通過對比傳世《秦風·無衣》與安大簡《詩》所存殘篇，探討詩篇內部單元的重組如何影響「刺詩」的敘事結構。本文主張，安大簡版本中章節順序的倒置及個別詩句的增補限制了敘事的詮釋空間，因此，該詩的解讀必然與傳世版本存在重要差異。此外，《秦風·無衣》的例子還提供了一種新的範式，促使我們對某些《詩經》篇章表面上的「諷喻」解讀進行重新審視。