1. That is, when society needed saving.
2. That is, ‘not cruel’.
3. That is, a sense of ‘right and wrong’.
4. This was the colour used by the Xia. Shang later used light-coloured sacrifices.
5. I have chosen the rendering ‘augury’ from the possible meanings for the character in the text since it appears to make sense of the preceding clause ‘embellished like trees and grasses’, which could easily describe a pattern of cracks in an oracle-bone divination.
6. That is, for marriage.
7. A mu is approx. a sixth of an acre, or a fifteenth of a hectare.
8. Whose salaries were paid in kind, including food.
9. Literally, ‘the centre of the state’ – here we are dealing with a city-state, which would have a central capital.
10. Li: a unit of distance, about one third of a mile.
11. Defined here as ‘punishments, names, Regulations and Statecraft’.
12. A minister of the state of Qi in the Spring and Autumn period of the Zhou Dynasty
13. The character 
, ‘virtue’, is used here, and may indicate that the reward lay in being recognized as virtuous, and so liable to promotion.
14. Typically in grain or cloth.