Note 94 — Chapter VI

Bride purchase. 29. Immediately arising out of this is the more common form of bride purchase which prevails among most of the inferior tribes. In many cases, as will be seen by the examples which have been collected, the bride-price is fixed by tribal custom, and it marks a progressive stage in the evolution of marriage, where the purchase of the bride is veiled under the fiction of a contribution given by the relatives of the youth to cover the expenses of the marriage feast, which is, except in the dola or inferior form of marriage, provided by the relatives of the bride. “Let no father,” says Manu,94 “who knows the law, receive a gratuity, however small, for giving his daughter in marriage: since the man who, through avarice, takes a gratuity for that purpose, is a seller of his offspring.”