Bride Wealth

Is Bride price and Bride wealth same? Bride price or bride wealth is a gift of money or goods from the groom or his kin to the bride’s kin to seal a marriage. Practice does not reduce a woman to the position of slave but associated with low status.

Bride price or bride wealth is a gift of money or goods from the groom or his kin to the bride’s kin to seal a marriage. Bride price is a transfer of resources from the groom’s family to the bride’s family, in acknowledgement of the transfer of rights over her productive and reproductive capabilities, more preferably, right to marry the bride and the right to her children. Bride wealth was formerly called bride price, an inaccurate term conveying the misleading perception that marriage was merely an economic exchange. A major function of bride price is legitimating the new reproductive and socioeconomic unit created by the marriage.

Of all the forms of economic transaction/gift exchange involved in marriage, bride price is the most common, prevalent especially in patrilineal societies and is much less common in societies having matrilineal, double or bilateral descent. The bride price may be important to the woman and her family. Indeed, the fee they receive can serve as a security. Typically, these gifts can be further utilized to secure brides for the girl’s brothers (if any) – a form of circulating wealth which is believed to contribute significantly to social solidarity in stateless societies.

The payment can be made in different currencies; livestock and food are two of the more common in any stateless societies. With the increased importance of commercial exchange, money has increasingly become part of the bride price payments. Among the Nandi, the bride price consists of about five to seven cattle, one or two sheep and goats, cowrie shells, and money equivalent to the value of one cow. Cattle, which dominate among the East African pastoralists societies culturally and economically, traditionally make up the greater part of bride wealth.

Bride wealth transactions, although globally widespread, are particularly characteristic of Africa and Oceania. They are especially common among East African pastoralists such as the Gusii, Turkana, and Kipsigis. In India, Characteristically and traditionally bride price is found in the regions of south and also of lower status groups. Usually cross-culturally kinds of societies are likely to have the customs of bride price, and are likely to practice horticulture and lack social stratification.

Bride wealth is usually the mode of marriage payment in societies where women play a major role in production and that it therefore signifies a measure of ‘compensation’ to the girl’s family for the loss of her labour. It is also believed to be typical of societies where women do not have independent rights in parental property, or else to be an indication of a demographic imbalance – a serious shortage of marriageable women which may sometimes be an outcome of the practice of polygyny.

In societies where bride wealth is customary, a person can claim compensation for a violation of conjugal rights only if the bride wealth has been paid. Furthermore, bride wealth paid at marriage is returned (subject to specified conditions) if a marriage is terminated. On certain state of violation of conjugal rights, the bride’s family might not return the bride price to the groom or might be unable to do so, thus the wife’s kin may pressure her to remain with her husband, even if she does not wish to do so. Thus, Bride wealth serves to stabilize marriage by giving both families a vested interest in keeping the couple together.

Bride price is also likely where women contribute a great deal to primary subsistence activities and where they contribute more than men to all kinds of economic activities. Although these findings might suggest that women are highly valued in such societies, though the status of women relative to men is not higher in societies in which women contribute a lot to primary subsistence activities. Indeed, bride price is likely to occur in societies in which men make most of the decisions in the household, and decision making by men is one indicator of lower status for women. Thence, the practice does not reduce a woman to the position of slave – although it is associated with relatively low status for women.

Of special interest is the fact that, since the turn of the century, many communities in India which formerly gave bride price now insist on dowry. This change is associated, like the ban on widow remarriage, with claims to higher status in the caste system – that is, with the process of ‘sanskritization’, with the increased domination of the Indo-Aryan north over the Dravidian south, or with the hegemonization of culture associated with modern commodity production.

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To know more you can visit these significant topics:
The Development of Literacy and Schooling, Commensality, Indian State, State, Indian Society, Religion, Marriage, kinship System, Social Institution, Types of Marriage, Family, Community, Indology, Social Movement,  Nation State

Reference:

• Serena Nanda and Richard L. Warms, Cultural Anthropology.
• Ember, Carol R. and Melvin Ember, Anthropology.
• Uberoi, Patricia, Family, Kinship and Marriage in India. 

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