Padyab-kusti is the elementary purification and is performed many times a day: on rising, after using the lavatory, before eating, before each of the five prayers, and after any contact with impurity. It consists of washing the exposed parts — face, hands, forearms, feet — with water, followed by untying and retying the kusti with the prescribed formulas. Beyond it the tradition has graded purifications: the nahn, a fuller ritual bath before initiation, marriage or festivals; and the barashnum, a nine-night ceremony of extraordinary elaboration involving successive washings with consecrated bull's urine, sand and water in a marked-out enclosure, historically required of priests before performing the higher liturgies and of anyone gravely polluted. The barashnum is now rare and performed by few. The general principle worth noting is that purity in this system is a physical condition maintained continuously by physical means, not a moral state restored by contrition — a distinction that separates it sharply from the confessional traditions.