The dead are to be carried away on peculiarly dry paths, little trodden by cattle, beasts of draught, and pure men, and laid on the driest and barest places in the earth, on the highest eminences where carnivorous birds and dogs may most easily see them.[407] The soil is to be dug out, waist deep, if the earth is soft; if hard, to the depth of half a foot, and this depression is to be filled with tiles, stones, and dust; for damp earth contracts pollution most readily, whereas stones, tiles, and dust contract it very slowly. To this place (Dakhma) the naked corpse is to be taken on a bier, which has a foundation of stones or tiles, by two strong men--never by one: one bearer would pollute himself for ever, and the Druj Naçu would never leave him. Any one who throws a cloth on the dead must be punished with twice four hundred, or twice a thousand stripes, according to the size of the cloth. The corpse is to be placed on the Dakhma, with the face turned to the sun (any one who does not place the body with its face to the sun, is to pay the same penalty as is prescribed for the murder of a pure man[408]): the corpse is then to be secured in its place by iron, stones, or lead, attached to the feet or hair, in order that the birds and dogs may not carry away the bones and remains to water and trees: the neglect of these fastenings is to be punished with twice two hundred stripes.[409] If it rains or snows, or the wind is strong, so that the necessary preparations cannot be made on the day of death, the corpse can be carried on its own bed and mat to the Dakhma.[410] At these burial-places the Daevas hold their meetings; there they propagate and assemble, "in order to bring to death, fifty, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, an innumerable host of men;" there the Daevas are most dangerous and deadly to men: for in the places of burial are "infection, disease, fever, impurity, ague, trembling, and old hair." A Dakhma is not pure till the body has been eaten by dogs and birds, till the remains have entirely changed into dust, and become utterly mixed up with the foundation of mortar, tiles, and stones. When this point has been reached, the Dakhma should be levelled. Such destruction of the place of burial is regarded by the law-book as the annihilation of death itself; as one of the highest virtues of the faithful. "He who levels only so much as the size of his own body of a burial-place," says the book of the law, "has repented of all his sins which he has committed in thought, speech, and action; he has not only repented of them, but he has expiated them, and the two heavenly powers will not begin a contest about his entrance into paradise."[411]