ON THE VERGE OF HISTORY
character, and that no attempt to divide them systematically was made. They did, however, receive appellations from the people. Just as household servants speak of "the master" and a ship's crew of "the captain," so the first governor of a province came to be called "the imperial person of the country" (Kuni no mi-yatsuko); the first agricultural superintendent was known as "the lord of the fields" (agatanushi); the first high chamberlain as "the great man of the palace" (miya no obito). In like manner, such titles as "great body" (omi), "master of the multitude" (muraji), "honorable intermediary" (nakatomi) and so on, were employed as terms of respect, and ultimately passed into use as official titles.
The share assigned to a patriarch in the central or provincial administration became his inalienable property. He transmitted it to his son and to his son's son. Thus not only were offices hereditary but their occupants multiplied, so that all the posts and perquisites of a department fell finally into the possession of a clan. The head of the clan then came to be distinguished by the prefix O (great or senior); as O-mi (the senior honourable person), O-muraji (the great master of the multitude), and so on. There were no family names in the Occidental sense of the term. Men were distinguished instead by the titles of the administrative posts belonging to their houses. The name of the post preceded that of the per-
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