330	LAW AND  FREEDOM IN HISTORY
have also found that, in all past cases of social disintegration that we ha^
mustered in an empirical survey, the same successive stages all invariab]
occur in the same order, each stage taking approximately the same peric
of time in the history of one civilization as the corresponding stage in ti
history of another, so that the disintegration-phase as a whole presen
the picture of a uniform process with a uniform total duration when v,
take a synoptic view of the divers examples of it provided by the historie
of a dozen different broken-down civilizations. Indeed, as soon as a socii
breakdown has occurred and the process of social disintegration has s<
in, the tendency towards variety and differentiation that is characteristi
of the growth-phase of a civilization is replaced by a nisus towards uni
formity and identity that shows its power and persistence by triumphin
sooner or later over interference from outside, as well as over recalcitranc
from within.
We have observed, for example,1 how, when first a Syriac and then a
Indie universal state was cut short by the impact of an intrusive Helleni
Civilization prematurely, before it had completed a universal state1
standard life-span of some four hundred years' duration, the smitten an
submerged society could not or would not pass away until, in spite of th
disturbing influence of an alien body social, it had duly completed th
regular course of a broken-down society's disintegration by eventual!
re-entering into the interrupted phase and abiding in a reintegrated uni
versa! state long enough to make up, in the aggregate, a psychologies
equivalent of the length of time normally occupied by this phase in th
standard pattern of the disintegration-process.2 Disintegration did no
culminate in dissolution in either of these two historic cases until th
prematurely shattered universal state had re-established its structun
and resumed its course, even though in Indie history the interrupte<
universal state had to wait for more than 450 years before it could fin<
its opportunity to achieve an avatar of the Mauryan Empire in the shapi
of the Guptan Empire, while in Syriac history it had to wait for no lesi
than 950 years for the Achaemenian Empire to re-emerge in the shape o
the Arab Caliphate. These belated but insistent resumptions of a regula
1	In. I. i. 73—77.
2	This 'psychological equivalent' of a normal continuous Time-span of approximate!;
four hundred years* length does not, of course, add up to precisely the same figure in th<
aggregate when it is provided in two instalments separated from one another chrono
logically by the intrusion of an alien civilization. We should expect it to take a longe
aggregate tale of years to produce a psychological effect in two instalments than to pro
duce it in a single one; and in the Syriac case we find, in fact, that the effective duration!
of the Achaemenian Empire and the Arab Caliphate amount, in the aggregate, not jus
to 400 years, but to 522, (see Table I in vol. vi, p. 3*7, and also in vol. vii, p. 769
there). On the other hand the effective durations of the Mauryan and Guptan Empires
amount to no more than 322 years (see ibid.); and, even if we were to equate the perioc
of the pom Guptica with the full length of time during which the Gupta Dynasty was
officially regnant, we should barely arrive at an aggregate exceeding four hundred years
for the two instalments here.
This at first sight surprisingly small aggregate duration of a pax oecumenica in Indi<
history is perhaps partly explained by the consideration that a psychological equivalem
of it was also provided regionally, during the period of Hellenic intrusion, by the Bac-
trian Greek, Sakan, Kushan, and Andhran regimes to some extent. In this context we
may observe that, during the corresponding Hellenic intrusion upon the Syriac World,
the role of the Andhra Dynasty in Indie history was played in Syriac history by the
Arsacidae and Sasanidae, and the role of the Bactrian Greek. Sakan, and Kushan princes
by the Seleucidae.