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→Minamoto and Taira clans
===Minamoto and Taira clans===
===Minamoto and Taira clans===
As princes and princesses of the Imperial line grew more numerous, succession disputes would have become extremely complicated without a method of disinheriting offspring. This was commonly done by assigning them to a non-Imperial house, giving them a new surname--usually Minamoto or Taira.
As princes and princesses of the Imperial line grew more numerous, succession disputes would have become extremely complicated without a method of disinheriting offspring. This was commonly done by assigning them to a non-Imperial house, and granting them a new surname, such as Minamoto or Taira.
The samurai class as a whole emerged from a combination of these disinherited lineages turning to military activities, and warriors from the provinces being hired by the Court to provide military service. The Imperial Court had exercised a conscript system during the Nara period, but abandoned this in [[792]] in favor of simply hiring warriors from the provinces. These warriors were freed from tax obligations in exchange for their service, and quickly came to embrace the warrior identity, focusing on warrior training and passing down that identity to their children, forming a new social class of warrior lineages and households; because they served the Court, they came to be known by a noun form of the verb ''saburau'', "to serve": ''samurai''.<ref>[[Albert M. Craig]], ''The Heritage of Japanese Civilization'', Second Edition, Prentice Hall (2011), 20.</ref>
===Hôgen and Heiji Disturbances===
===Hôgen and Heiji Disturbances===