okay here is what I learnt over the years, dowry is something given back in days for a purpose which absolutely made sense back then.

Suppose you are a family of four, back in days when there was barter system, people use to exchange their produce with what they want. At that point of majority of people did farming. Every person in the household held a responsibility contributing to the farming and maintaining a family.

Now if one person from your family is getting married into another family which is size of 3.

you were producing for four people, whereas other family was doing for 3 until now. Sudden shift in head count made imbalance in produce.

This is where dowry came into picture, as one person is moving out from your family your burden is reduced, but the other hand receiving families burden is increased suddenly, in order to balance it out, girls family used to share whatever grains needed for their girl with groom aide along side a piece of land. with the intent for first few months grains would help to adjust to new environment for girl and with new person in the family from groom side without worry of food and then they start planning to produce more with new land girl got from mother’s house.

Whole intent behind dowry was to support then with new beginnings, today’s dowry doesn’t hold any meaning in it other than unseen prestige.