Cài Mó 蔡模 (1188–1246)
Zì Zhòngjué 仲覺, hào Juéxuān 覺軒. Native of Jiànān 建安 (modern Jiànōu, Fújiàn). Eldest son of Cài Shěn 蔡沈 (1167–1230), the Shūjí zhuàn 書集傳 author and Zhū Xī’s foremost disciple in the Shū (KR1b0019); elder brother of Cài Háng 蔡杭 (1193–1259), who served at Lǐzōng’s court as Tóngzhī Shūmìyuàn shì and inherited the family’s intellectual leadership.
Cài Mó’s surviving works in Kanripo:
- KR1h0025 Mèngzǐ jíshū 孟子集疏 (14 juàn, WYG) — sub-commentary on Zhū Xī’s Mèngzǐ jízhù, drawing on the Jíyì, Huòwèn, and the words of Zhāng Shì 張栻, Lǚ Zǔqiān 呂祖謙, and the principal ZhūXī disciples.
He also wrote (per Zhào Shùnsūn’s 趙順孫 catalog at KR1h0028) a Dàxué yǎnshuō 大學演說 and a Lúnyǔ jíshū 論語集疏 — both no longer extant.
The Sìkù tíyào at KR1h0025 preserves Cài Háng’s postface to the Mèngzǐ jíshū, which records the genesis of the work: their father Cài Shěn felt that Zhū Xī’s LúnyǔMèngzǐ jízhù had a qìxiàng hánxù 氣象涵蓄 (“atmosphere of held-back implication”) that made it hard to read without the help of the Jíyì, Huòwèn, and the related discussions in Zhāng Shì, Lǚ Zǔqiān, and the principal ZhūXī disciples — but had not lived to compile such a help-book; Cài Mó undertook the task in concert with his brother Cài Háng, beginning at Jiāxī jǐhài 嘉熙己亥 (1239), and not yet daring to release the manuscript by bǐngwǔ 丙午 (1246) — the year of his death.
Cài Mó’s careful filial habit, illustrated in the Sìkù tíyào: where his master’s reading and his father’s reading conflict, he sets aside the master and follows the father.
(CBDB id 10059; dates 1188–1246 secure from the Cài-family genealogy in Sòngshǐ 434 附傳 and from the Mèngzǐ jíshū postface dating.)