In the view of the Avesta impurity consists essentially in that which is opposed to life; hence there is no worse form of uncleanness than that caused by the corpse. The body, as soon as the soul has left it, belongs to Angromainyu. The fiend of death, the Druj Naçu, obtains possession of it, and from it she springs on all who touch it, or come near it. If a man dies, or a dog--and in this matter dogs are put quite on a level with men--and other men and women are in the same house--two, five, fifty, or a hundred--the Druj Naçu comes immediately from the north in the form of a fly, and settles on all the inhabitants of the house and makes them impure with infection, pollution, and uncleanness.[372] In the first instance she is to be met by incantations--the Gathas, Bisamruta, Thrisamruta, Chathrasamruta, must be repeated; then the fiend falls to pieces like grass that has been dead a year.[373] After this the hearth-fire must be removed from the house of the dead, and the sacred utensils--the mortar, the cup, the sacred bundle of rods, and the Haoma. In winter the fire can be kindled again upon the hearth after nine nights; in summer, when the need for warmth and cooked food is less pressing, after a month; any one who does not observe these periods is to be punished with twice two hundred stripes.[374] After purification the kinsmen are to utter prayers for the departed, and the number of these is fixed, in the Vendidad, in the same fanciful manner which is so often met with in the book of Manu. The number decreases according to the degree of relationship; for the nearest kinsmen thirty prayers are spoken; for the most remote, five; if the dead man has led an impure life the number of prayers is doubled in order to give efficacy to the petition.[375]