Dowry
A marriage payment made by the bride's family toward the new household or the groom's family, historically prominent across South Asia, the Mediterranean, and pre-modern Europe. Jack Goody read dowry as 'diverging devolution' — a daughter's share of family property transmitted at marriage rather than at her parents' death — deployed by stratified, plow-based, land-scarce societies to keep property and class position from leaking across class lines at marriage, in contrast to bridewealth's very different economic logic.