The order carriers of Yamarāja, the Yamadūtas, are explaining the factual position of piety and impiety and how a living entity is entangled in this material world. Describing the history of Ajāmila’s life, the Yamadūtas relate that in the beginning he was a learned scholar of the Vedic literature. He was well-behaved, neat and clean, and very kind to everyone. In fact, he had all good qualities. In other words, he was like a perfect brāhmaṇa. A brāhmaṇa is expected to be perfectly pious, to follow all the regulative principles and to have all good qualities. The symptoms of piety are explained in these verses. Śrīla Vīrarāghava Ācārya comments that dhṛta-vrata means dhṛtaṁ vrataṁ strī-saṅga-rāhityātmaka-brahmacarya-rūpam. In other words, Ajāmila followed the rules and regulations of celibacy as a perfect brahmacārī and was very softhearted, truthful, clean and pure. How he fell down in spite of all these qualities and thus came to be threatened with punishment by Yamarāja will be described in the following verses.