were
unable to establish themselves, and when they tried to fight their way
to the north-east they were dispersed, so that they failed entirely to
form an actual state.

There was a third attempt in 384 to form a state in north China. A
Tibetan who had joined Fu Chien with his followers declared himself
independent when Fu Chien came back, a beaten man, to Shensi. He caused
Fu Chien and almost the whole of his family to be assassinated, occupied
the capital, Ch'ang-an, and actually entered into the heritage of Fu
Chien. This Tibetan dynasty is known as the "Later Ch'in dynasty"
(384-417). It was certainly the strongest of those founded in 384, but
it still failed to dominate any considerable part of China and remained
of local importance, mainly confined to the present province of Shensi.
Fu Chien's empire nominally had three further rulers, but they did not
exert the slightest influence on events.

With the collapse of the state founded by Fu Chien, the tribes of
Hsien-pi who had left their homeland in the third century and migrated
to the Ordos region proceeded to form their own state: a man of the
Hsien-pi tribe of the Ch'i-fu founded the so-called "Western Ch'in
dynasty" (385-431). Like the other Hsien-pi states, this one was of weak
construction, resting on the military strength of a few tribes and
failing to attain a really secure basis. Its territory lay in the east
of the present province of Kansu, and so controlled the eastern end of
the western Asian caravan route, which might have been a source of
wealth if the Ch'i-fu had succeeded in attracting commerce by discreet
treatment and in imposing taxation on it. Instead of this, the bulk of
the long-distance traffic passed through the Ordos region, a little
farther north, avoiding the Ch'i-fu state, which seemed to the merchants
to be too insecure. The Ch'i-fu depended mainly on cattle-breeding in
the remote mountain country in the south of their territory, a region
that gave them relative security from attack; on the other hand, this
made them unable to exercise any influence on the course of political
events in western China.

Mention must be made of one more state that rose from the ruins of Fu
Chien's empire. It lay in the far west of China, in the western part of
the present province of Kansu, and was really a continuation of the
Chinese "Earlier Liang" realm, which had been annexed ten years earlier
(376) by Fu Chien. A year before his great march to th