ABSTRACT
As noted in the preceding chapter, the concrete and historical evidence about China becomes much clearer and more plentiful, as we go from the earliest times to the Han Dynasty; thereafter the treatment may be increasingly historical, and not merely inferential (though the inferential analysis still remains important). Some evidence has been offered in the foregoing of the great degree to which the original Chinese civilisation developed by a process of accretion, in a highly eclectic manner. In an extremely fluid and changeful process, all sorts of components and methods were adopted, mingled, varied and fused from a great mixture of races, political, social and philosophical or religious ideas, systems of administration, production, etc., all in a constant state of flux.
