Knowledge and austerity purify the soul. When the inward person is unclean by improper food, it is purified by suppression of breath and the wild produce of the earth: a drunkard by molten glass.* When the body is defiled by ordure, wine, blood and the like, it becomes pure by cleans­ing below the navel with earth and water, and above it with earth and water, rinsing the teeth, washing the eyes, bathing, abstaining for a day and a night from food and drink, and afterwards eating five things from a cow.* A pathway or water that has been polluted by the shadow of a Chanḍál (pariah) is again purified by sunlight, moonlight, and air. If the ordure of any animal falls into a well, sixty pitchers full of water must be taken out; if into a tank, a hundred pitchers; any part of a river, is purified by its own flow.* From oil that is defiled, the contami­nating matter is taken out and the oil is boiled. Milk cannot be purified except only when the shadow of a Chanḍál may have fallen upon it, in which case it becomes pure by boiling. Cotton, leaves, molasses, grain, become pure by the sprinkling of a little water after removing the defilement. Gold, silver, stone, vegetable produce, rope and whatever grows beneath the earth and utensils of cane are purified by water, and if they have been defiled by unclean oil and the like, by hot water. Clothes are puri­fied by water. Wooden vessels if defiled by the touch of a Chanḍál cannot be made pure, but if touched by a ´Sudra or any unclean thing, may be purified by scraping; and wood and bone and horn must be treated in the same manner. Anything made of stone after being washed must be buried for seven days. A sieve, a winnowing basket, a deer-skin, and the like, and a pestle-and-mortar, are purified by being sprinkled with water. A cart may be scraped in the part defiled and the rest dashed with water. An earthen vessel is purified by being heated in the fire; and the ground by one of the following: sweeping, lighting a fire thereon, ploughing, lapse of a considerable time, being touched by the feet or back of a cow, sprinkling with water, digging or plastering with cowdung. Food smelt by a cow or into which hair, flies or lice* have fallen, is purified with ashes and water. If any thing is defiled by excretions from the mouth, nose, eyes, ears, or sweat, or touched by hair or nails detached from one's own body, it should be first washed, and then scoured with clean earth, and again washed until the smear and smell have gone. Excretions from the mouth, nose, ears, or eyes of another, if they come from above the navel, must if possible, be purified as above described, after which he must bathe: all below the navel, and the two hands are purified by cleansing in the same way. If he be defiled with spirituous liquor, semen, blood, catamenia, (the touch of) a lying-in woman, ordure and urine, he must wash with water and scour with earth, and again wash with water if the defilement be above the navel; if it extend below, after the second washing, he must rub himself with butter from a cow and then with its milk, and afterward with its butter-milk, and next smear himself with cowdung and wash in its urine, and finally drink three handfuls of water from the river. If he touch a washer­man, or a dyer, or a currier, or an executioner, or a hunter, or a fisherman, or an oilman, or tame swine, he is purified by water only. But if he touch a woman in her courses or a lying-in woman, or a sweeper, or a great sinner,* or a corpse, or a dog, or an ass, cat, crow, domestic cock, mouse or a eunuch, or the smoke of a burning corpse, or the dust from an ass, dog, goat or sheep reach him, he must enter the water in his clothes and bathe and look at the sun and pronounce incantations to it. After touching a greasy human bone, he must bathe with his clothes on or else wash himself and drink three handfuls of water and look at the sun and put his hand upon a cow. Where the sun is not visible, he must look upon fire. If silk or wool come in contact with any thing the touch of which (in a man) would require his bathing, it is purified by air and sunshine if it be not actually defiled, otherwise it must also be washed. A woman in her courses becomes pure after the fourth day.

If it is not known whether a thing be clean or unclean, they accept the decision of some virtuous person regarding it or sprinkle it with water. The details on this subject are numerous.