16 RENAISSANCES

over the Mamluks.1 The ghost of a Sinic universal state that had hrcn
embodied in the Ts'in and Han Empire2 returned to haunt an aililiaU'd
Far Eastern Society in the shape of the Sui and T'ung Kmpirt»;-| and,
when the main body of the Far Eastern Society propagated an ntfshoot
on to Japanese soil, this Sinic political incuhus was exported to Yumuto
in A.D. 645 as an indispensable piece in the conventional suite of eon-
temporary Chinese cultural furniture, to play a weird role in its doubly
exotic new environment overseas.4

In the analogous propagation of an offshoot of Orthodox Christendom
on to Russian soil at the turn of the tenth and eleventh centuries oi" the
Christian Era, the converted Varangian war-lords* Scandinavian mother
wit or heaven-sent good fortune preserved them from committing the
political solecism of dressing themselves up in it re-conditioned Ktmum
Imperial skaramangion which had been transmuted on eighth-century
Greek shoulders from a silken robe into a leaden cope> and on tenth*
century Bulgar shoulders from a leaden cope into u corrosive tthirt of
Nessus. Yet the Russian offshoot of Orthodox Christendom proved,
after all, unable in the long run to escape its fate of having to take tic-
livery of an Hellenic political incubus which had become the chnruetrr*
istic peculiar institution of the Orthodox Christian way of Hie ninee the*
evocation of this ghost by Leo SyrUvS's necromantic genius. The Musco-
vite epigoni of Rurik, who provided a broken-down KuHsiim Orthodox
Christendom with its universal state,5 won for themndvert the duhioun
privilege of catering for this now necessary social service by ctjuipping
themselves with the redoubtable apparatus of an autocracy that c«u»
secrated its home-grown institutions by dedicating them to a Byzantine*
ideal. The formidable mission of casting herself for the role of'a Third
Rome was the price at which Moscow purchased from innlieioitH goda
her licence to monopolize the grim business of empire-building <w
Russian ground.6

Our survey up to this point baa made it evident that, in the historic*
of civilizations of the third generation, a renaissance of the umverwd
state of an antecedent civilization has been a not uncommon event, In*
deed, among all the civilizations of this third generation that were not
abortive, the Hindu Civilization is perhaps the only one in vvhontt history
we do not find this particular institution re-emerging from the payehic
storeroom of the affiliated society's memory of the apparentetl society1*
life and works; for, in the history of the Iranie Muslim Civilisation, wo
can perhaps detect in Timur Lenk's warped empire-building activitioi
a belated and abortive attempt at a revival of the antecedent Syriac
Society's universal state if we follow up the clue offered to it* by the
resemblances between Timur's career and Charlemagne'**7 1C Timur**
demonic temperament had not carried him to fatally farther iengthft

See VI, vii. ax-ay.

Points of likeness and difference between th« renai«i«nce§ of th« Sink «nU I f »««»Uc
un versa! states are examined on pp, 649-81, below.
See II. ii, 376; III. iii, 449? and VI. vii. 19,

See IV. iv. 88; V. v. «*sV. vlljiit and 309.

See VI. vu, 31-40 and IX. viii. 676-8, » 3co IV, Iv, 488-504.