This is the first attempt in any language to provide a comprehensive description of the motivation, textual and historical criticism, methods of synthesis, and style which have dominated Chinese historical scholarship for over two thousand years. Copious footnotes provide ample illustrations through characterization, textual history, and criticism of specific Chinese texts. The volume emphasizes both the strength and the deficiencies of the traditional procedure, confronting each feature of it with the strict methodology now currently practiced by leading sinologists alike in Europe, in the United States, in Japan, and in China.