POLITICAL IDEAS, IDEALS, INSTITUTIONS 17

than Charlemagne's limit in committing the marchman's besetting sin
of turning his arms against the interior of the world which it is his
historical mission to defend, it is conceivable that the Transoxanian
empire-builder might have emulated the achievement of his Austrasian
counterpart* who raised a ghost of the Roman Empire in Western Chris-
tendom, by raining a ghost of the 'Abbasid Caliphate on Iranic Muslim
ground—though we may also surmise that, even if Timur had achieved
the utmost success within his power in this enterprise, the contrast be-
tween a Timurid caricature of the Baghdad! 'Abbasid Caliphate at
Samarkand and a contemporary 'Abbasid reproduction of the Baghdad!
'Abbasid Caliphate at Cairo would have been even greater than the
historic contrast between Charlemagne's caricature and Leo Syrus's
reproduction of the Roman Empire.

In every instance of either an effectual or an abortive evocation of an
antecedent civilization's universal state that we have examined up to this
point, the society whose life this remnant has haunted has been linked
through a chrysalis-church* with the society out of whose ashes the
spectre has been conjured up. Is a chrysalis-church an indispensable
ofiieiiint in the rite whereby this feat of evocation is accomplished ? Or
are there cases in which the ghost of an antecedent civilisation's uni-
versal state has been evoked by a civilization which has been linked with
its predecessor, not through a chrysalis-church constructed by the pre-
decessor's internal proletariat, but through the predecessor's external
proletariat or its dominant minority?* The answers to these questions
likewise may prove to be indicated by the Carolingian clue which has
just enabled us to detect an abortive evocation of a ghost of the * Abbasid
Caliphate on Iranic Muslim ground by Timur Lcnk; for, in the early
histories of at least three secondary civilizations derived from primary
predecessors through these predecessors' external proletariats, we find
polities that bear a closer apparent family likeness to Charlemagne's
empire than Timur's empire displays* The polities in question are the
Chdu Empire in Sinic history,3 the Khatti Empire in Hittite history,
and the Toltcc Empire in Mexic history.4

AH these three empires resemble the Carolingian Empire in being
products of barbarian interlopers who had established themselves within
the former frontiers of the universal state of an antecedent civilization*
All three empires also resemble the Carolingian Empire in the further
point of having their political centre of gravity in regions which, in the
geography of the antecedent civilization and its universal state, had

< Thin conception of the. role of churches in the historic* of civilisations ha» b«cn
examined in VIL vii, 302 4 it 4;,

» thir duNHtfictttitm of societies in which these diwtinetions are drawn h ict out in the
table IV in vol. vii, fticiuK P- 77*«

a In the table* in vol. i, pp. 131-3 and 186, the Sinic Society HUB been wrongly claaai-
fled m ti primary civilixtition, in contradiction to the Hinic Koeiety'a own tradition that
the C*hriu culture wan « wpondttry one which had been preceded by that of the Bhang;
(nlias Yin). Since the publication of the farm three volume* of this Huuty in A.D. *934»
the Hinit* Sodety'n tradition about itn own antecedent* had been confirmed by the
program of ardmeulngieid di*c«very (nee VI. vii, 313, n. *)«

* For th« Toltet; Kmpiret *ee C/«nn, Th.s Mtxfenfwtm the Rtirlifst Time* to the Con"
qwxt (London 1036, I,ovnt Dicknon), pp, 34-50} Vaillant, G, C»; The Axttcs of Mexico
(London 1950, Penguin), pp. 65^3.