Bride price
According to French anthropologist Philippe Rospabé, its payment does therefore not entail the purchase of a woman, as was thought in the early twentieth century.
In Sub-Saharan Africa where land was abundant and there were few or no domesticated animals, manual labor was more valuable than capital, and therefore bridewealth dominated.
It is not the payment of the bride price that is prescribed, but the regulation of various aspects: The Torah discusses the practice of paying a bride price to the father of a virgin at Shemot (Exodus) 22:16-17 (JPS translation): "And if a man entice a virgin that is not betrothed, and lie with her, he shall surely pay a dowry for her to be his wife.
The provision in the ketubah replaced the bride price tradition recited in the Torah, which was payable at the time of the marriage by the groom.
This innovation came about because the bride price created a major social problem: many young prospective husbands could not raise the amount at the time when they would normally be expected to marry.
[7]: 177 "Homeric society" is a fictional construct involving legendary figures and deities, though drawing on the historical customs of various times and places in the Greek world.
[7]: 180 At the time when the Homeric epics were composed, "primitive" practices such as bride price and polygamy were no longer part of Greek society.
[7]: 179 [8] In the Odyssey, the least arguable references to bride price are in the marriage settlements for Ctimene, the sister of Odysseus;[9] Pero, the daughter of Neleus, who demanded cattle for her;[10] and the goddess Aphrodite herself, whose husband Hephaestus threatens to make her father Zeus return the bride price given for her, because she was adulterous.
[7]: 177–178 Islamic law commands a groom to give the bride a gift called a Mahr prior to the consummation of the marriage.
Morning gifts were preserved for many centuries in morganatic marriage, a union where the wife's inferior social status was held to prohibit her children from inheriting a noble's titles or estates.
Another legal provision for widowhood was jointure, in which property, often land, would be held in joint tenancy, so that it would automatically go to the widow on her husband's death.
Lobolo (or Lobola, sometimes also known as Roora) is the same tradition in most cultures in Southern Africa Xhosa, Shona, Venda, Zulu, Ndebele etc.
[12] Assyrians, who are indigenous people of Western Asia, commonly practice the bride price (niqda[what language is this?])
Various names for it in Central Asia include Kazakh: қалыңмал [qaləɴmal], Kyrgyz: калың [qɑlɯ́ŋ], Uzbek: qalin [qalɨn], and Russian: калым [kɐˈɫɨm].
[16] In Thailand, bride price—sin sod[17] (Thai: สินสอด, pronounced [sĭn sòt] and often erroneously referred to by the English term "dowry") is common in both Thai-Thai and Thai-foreign marriages.
The bride price in Thailand is paid at the engagement ceremony, and consists of three elements: cash, Thai (96.5 percent pure) gold, and the more recent Western tradition of a diamond ring.
'propose marriage'), where both families will meet to discuss the amount of the bride price (聘金; pìn jīn) demanded, among other things.
Several weeks before the actual wedding, the ritual of guo da li (过大礼; 過大禮; 'going through the great ceremony') takes place (on an auspicious date).
May 18 is a particularly auspicious day on which to pay the bride price and marry as its Chinese wording is phonetically similar to "I will get rich".
[38] Changing patterns in the betrothal and marriage process in some rural villages of modern China can be represented as the following stages:[39] It is also practised by Muslims known as Uyghurs in Xinjiang and is called Mahr.
In North East India, notably in Assam (the indigenous Assamese ethnic groups) an amount or token of bride price was and is still given in various forms.
In some parts of Indian state of Gujarat, bride price is rather prevalent, resulting from the fact that there are lesser number of girls than boys in the society.
