We have already set forth in detail what weight the Avesta lays on purity, and the avoidance of contact with dead matter, which has fallen into the power of the Daevas. From these points of view, in consequence of the reform, the priests in Iran came to adopt a peculiar mode of burial. Among the Arians of the Panjab the oldest form of burial was interment, and in time cremation came into use (IV. 62). But could the Athravas allow anything so unclean as a corpse to be laid on fire, the pure "son of Auramazda"? If the corpse was thrown into water the pure water was defiled; if buried in the earth pollution was cast on the beautiful, submissive daughter of Auramazda. Nothing therefore remained for the priests but to leave the corpse above the earth; in this case it served the pure animals, the birds and dogs, for nourishment, and was thus destroyed in the best manner. To throw a corpse into water, to bury or burn it, are great sins, actions which do not admit of expiation,[404] and those who do such things "help the drought which destroys the pasture, and the evil onsweeping winter, which kills the flock, and is full of snow; such men are impure for ever."[405] Any one who buries a dead dog or a dead man in the earth, and does not dig the body up again within half a year, is to receive twice five hundred stripes; any one who allows it to remain in the earth for a year, is to receive twice a thousand stripes; but if a man leaves a corpse in the earth for more than two years, there is for him neither penalty, nor expiation, nor purification.[406]