Abstract

Marriage is a legitimate union between a man and a woman, who decide to live together in an intimate relationship for the major portion of their lives. It is the most personal and close form of human relationship. Marriage is defined as a relatively permanent sexual union employing a number of inter-relating roles and statuses.  Marriage is associated with marriage payments, which is the most essential part of it. Payments which are given in consideration of marriage either by bride’s kin and/or groom’s kin to the groom’s kin and/or bride’s kin respectively are called marriage payments. The exchange of such payments may be seen in almost all known societies of the world. The paper deals with an important aspect of social structure called marriage payments. The present paper focuses on the practice of marriage payments as the important dimension of marriage. Marriage is one of the universal social institutions. It is peremptory for different reasons that have many biological, psychological, and social bases. Among the various reasons of its importance, one of the factors stabilizing the significance of marriage in society is marriage payment. Marriage payments form an important part of every society. They do not exist in vacuum. They are related to other institutions. According to the functionalist perspective, no practice can survive in society if it does not fulfill the needs of the society. Therefore, it is important to know about the institutional linkages or social anatomy of marriage payments and the kind of functions and dysfunctions they perform. The present paper focuses on the practice of marriage payments as the important dimension of marriage. The paper deals with an important aspect of social structure called marriage payments. Marriage is traditionally conceived to be a legally recognized relationship between an adult male and female that carries certain rights and obligations (Marshall, 1994: 388). Marriage involves exchange of gifts between bride’s kin and groom’s kin and these gifts are called marriage payments. These payments form an important part of marriage, without which, hardly any marriage is solemnized particularly in Indian context. Sociologists and social anthropologists have studied marriage payments in different regions and cultures and have defined the mode of payments differently. Indian society is a mosaic of many cultures. Infact there are cultures within a culture. Cultural regions can be identified by some cultural traits and by the people themselves. Different cultures show different ways of social practices, so is the case with marriage payments. Tambiah defines marriage payments as “comprising an elaborate series of payments back and forth between the marrying families. The series of gifts extends over a long period of time and persists after marriage”, e.g. in the form of mother’s brother’s obligation to his sister’s children (Tambiah, 1973: 92). Comaroff is of the view that “Marriage payment is not to be understood by the cross cultural comparison of their surface manifestations and their general social correlates, but by first establishing their relations to other organizational elements within encompassing systems” (Comaroff, 1980: 33). This means that marriage payments are interlinked with other elements of the society and, without the involvement of these elements e.g. affinity, descent, sex, age, devolution and rank, ceremonial exchange etc., it is hard to understand the meaning of marriage payments. These elements of society together constitute social structure. Thus marriage payments in a nutshell may be defined as gifts associated with marriage. The mode of giving and receiving of the gifts depends on the type of payment.