SINIC AND HELLENIC UNIVERSAL STATES 671
cessor-state to occupy the vacuum. The To Pa eventually reunited the
whole of the North under their own rule between the year AJX 385, in
which Shi-i-Kien's grandson To Pa Kuei had declared his barbarian
principality's independence under the high-sounding Sinic name 'Wei',1
and the year A.D. 439, in which the last of the other surviving barbarian
principalities in the North was extinguished.2 In contrast to these
Northern repercussions of the decisive battle in the Huai Basin in
A.D. 383, the no less decisive battle in the same theatre in A.D. 495 did
not bring to the ground the To Pa barbarian 'Wei* reproduction of the
Tibetan barbarian 'Ts'in' realm. The unitary Wei regime in the North
survived for another thirty-nine years; its eventual bi-partition in
A.D. 534 was followed, within another forty-three years, by the recon-
stitution of a unitary Northern Empire under the regime of the Pe Chou
in A.D. 577; and this political reunification of the North was followed
in its turn, within twelve years, by a third, and this time at last success-
ful, endeavour on the part of a Northern war-lord to conquer the South.
An enterprise that had proved to be beyond a Tibetan Ts'in Fu ELien's
strength in A,D. 383, and still beyond a To Pa Wei Hiao Wen-ti's
strength in A.D. 495, was thus eventually achieved in A.D. 589 by a
Chinese Sui Wen-ti who had supplanted his Hiongnu Pe Chou master
in the North in A.D. 581.

In this perspective the histories of the former northern provinces of
the Han Empire during a post-Han interregnum and the former
western provinces of the Roman Empire during a post-Roman inter-
regnum take on very diverse appearances. When we look in a post-
Roman Western Europe for a counterpart of the Wei Empire in a
post-Han Northern China, the Merovingian Power will be the closest
match that we shall find. Like the To Pa under the Wei regime, the
Franks under the Merovingian regime progressively swallowed up the
neighbouring barbarian successor-states of the Roman Empire that had
been carved out by rival barbarian war-bands. Clovis himself annexed
the Alemannic principality in Alsace and Swabia in A.D, 496 and threw
the Visigoths out of Gaul in A.D. 507; in A.D. 528 Clovis's successor
Theodoric I stretched out his arm into a then still barbarian interior
of the Continent as far eastward as Thuringia; and the Burgundiaa
principality in the upper basin of the Rhone and the Saone was de-
finitively annexed to an expanding Prankish realm in AJX 532-4. If
there is any period in the Merovingian Prankish annals that invites
comparison with the half-century of To Pa history, ending in the year
A.D. 495, during which the Wei regime was at its zenith, we shall find
this Merovingian equivalent 'in good King Dagobert's palmy days*.3
As soon, however, as we confront the Merovingian and the Wei dis-
pensations with one another, as they were in these periods of their
respective floruits, we become aware of the immensity of the Wei
regime's relative superiority.

1 See ibid., p. 105.

2 See Herrmann, A.: Historical and Commercial Atlas of China (Cambridge, Mass.
1035, Harvard University Press), p. 29, Map IV.

3 Barham, R. H.: TheIngoldsby Legends, Second Series; 'The Lay of Saint Medard*,
line i.